Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin (pub: 1996)

First Edition. Signed on title page.
Fine in dust jacket.

Energetic, voluptuous, and well past sixty, Queen Mary Purdy opens a smoke-enders clinic in the resort town of Fulton, North Carolina. Her unorthodox approach (aroma therapy? Massage?) provides much grist for the rumor mill.

But Quee's new venture is the least of the many scandals brewing in Fulton: a happily married woman entrusts her illicit secrets to a dead letter file; a mad-as-hell property owner seeks revenge for his recently-submerged investment; a radio talk show host longs to hit the big time, by any means. Quee knows these folks need help with more than their nicotine fits, and their troubles are all tied to that resilient little muscle known as the heart.

JILL MCCORKLE's first two novels were released simultaneously when she was just out of college, and the New York Times called her "a born novelist." Since then, she has published six novels and four collections of short stories, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories several times, as well as The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books, and her most recent novel, Life After Life, was a New York Times bestseller. She has received the New England Booksellers Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, the Atlantic, and other publications. She was a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard, where she also chaired the department of creative writing. She is currently a faculty member of the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.