Sally Paradiso: a novel
Brown Fedora Books, 2009
"a thought-provoking treat for book lovers and a laugh-out-loud delight!"
Jim DeFilippi
What happens after Sally Paradiso comes home to find her boring husband Dickie in bed with someone else?
Can she save the France Street Sycamore? Will she learn to stand up to her brother-in-law, the worst polluter in Alloway County, VA?
And what on this green earth is she going to do about those visions she's been having?
This magical, sexy, comic novel follows one woman's early-midlife sea change, and the coming of age of her millennial daughter. Sometimes it's satirical, sometimes a little bawdy, sometimes just plain fun.
Woven through the tale of Sally's adventures is a sequence of love prose-poems to the Appalachian Mountains and the rest of Mama Gaia. Fans of Larsen's earlier novels (Silk Road, Bronze Mirror, Manchu Palaces) will recognize her Buddhist perspective and her wit.
New readers and returnees alike will be charmed by this sassy Southern comeback to On the Road. Join Sally on her quest and you'll meet down-home second-gen hippies, friendly Yankee lesbians, a sketchy guru named Leonard, and a sensitive journalist half in love with Emily Dickinson—and half with Sally herself.