Shakey Smith: 7 books

It is 1992, February of that year to be exact-- the month of brooms. An icy wind is scouring the sandhills of western Kansas, sweeping tumbleweeds and clouds of grit across the gray prairie. There is nothing on the monotonous horizon but same and old. This is the time of year that folks do crazy,...

It is June 2, 1970. Cow pasture hippie, Lillian McMullen, is home from college. Lillian is nicknamed Quick because she does everything early. She started kindergarten at four, learned to drive at eleven, owned a car at fifteen; graduated high school at seventeen, was engaged to be married at eighteen....

Clyde Dupee, pronounced ‘dupay’, much like men of his ilk, wanders through life in a drunken haze: drunk, sober, drunk, sober, two words repeated for a lifetime by men such as Clyde. A jailbird, an abysmal penny-ante burglar; he was certainly not someone the poised and proper Tharon McGee could...

Elspeth Zaiser, mother to three wayward daughters and six headstrong cats is having a tough summer. For one thing her three daughters are home from college. One is a witch and the other two are… irascible. For another, her gossipy, religious fanatic neighbor has declared holy war on her scarecrow. In...

Nineteen-year -old Marie Rastrelli did not believe in true love. Lark, dark, brilliantly sarcastic, fiercely independent, and undeniably homely, neither motherhood nor a family had ever been in her plans. She wanted to be a dentist. Balding, bespectacled, and even homelier than Marie, eighteen-year-old...

Forty years is a long time to be married. Even a marriage that began with hearts and flowers can become a long, tedious row to hoe. Cy and Stevie Dupee are facing this milestone in a few short weeks. The small family dinner they requested has turned into a county-wide extravaganza. Tensions are simmering...

Weddings and funerals; funerals and weddings: about the only time an extended family comes together is for one or the other. There has been a death in the Dupee family. Oldest brother Dud Jr. has gone on to his eternal reward… or at least to somewhere beyond this earthly realm. The sudden loss has...