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The story begins on July 1, 1926, a sultry day when "the sun was riding high in a sky bleached pale as old lace." Mattie Mills, a new bride in the small town of Jexville, Mississippi, is preparing for a birthday party that will reshape the lives of the entire town. Before the day is over, Mattie will see lightning strike nine-year-old Duncan McVay, leaving the child half dead.
Mattie is strangely drawn to Duncan and to her mother, JoHanna McVay, a woman whose liberated lifestyle and interests fuel the town's gossip mill. As friendship grows among the three, Mattie learns that her new husband, the town's barber, is a cad of the worst caliber.
Despite her crumbling marriage, JoHanna teaches Mattie to look at the world through different eyes, and the young woman begins to seize control of her own destiny.
Mississippi native Haines chose the same mythical setting for her first book, Summer of the Redeemers, which was published in 1994. She said she plans to round out "the Jexville trilogy" with a third book set in the town which sounds amazingly like her hometown of Lucedale.
Touched is southern reading at its best.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.