Hot Fudge Sundae Blues: A Novel - Softcover

Marshall, Bev

3.54

216 ratings by Goodreads

9780345468437: Hot Fudge Sundae Blues: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345468430 ISBN 13: 9780345468437

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2005

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A lyrical coming-of-age story set in the 1960s, Hot Fudge Sundae Blues is an extraordinary companion to Bev Marshall’s first two novels, Walking Through Shadows and Right as Rain. Here again she mines the territory of the small town of Zebulon, Mississippi, where even the most seemingly ordinary folks harbor well-disguised heartaches and intricate secrets.

Thirteen-year-old Layla Jay was only pretending when she knelt before the preacher to seek salvation. She was hoping to make her grandma happy and get noticed by the cute new boy in town. But religion truly piques her interest when a young, handsome visiting preacher stays at her family’s home. Wallace seems genuinely interested in Layla Jay’s life–until he meets her mama and falls head over heels, like many men have before him.

When Wallace marries Frieda, Layla Jay believes she will finally have the father she’s always wanted. But it seems that none of her dreams will come true as Layla Jay wrestles with her mother’s reckless ways, her unsavory stepfather, a best friend’s betrayal, and the longing for love’s first kiss. Yet everything pales in comparison to what happens next as Layla Jay is forced to tell a lie to save her mother’s world from crashing down.

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About the Author:

Bev Marshall grew up in McComb and Gulfport, Mississippi. She holds degrees from the University of Mississippi and Southeastern Louisiana University, where she taught in the English Department. Her short stories have appeared in Xavier Review; Potpourri; Maryland Review; Stories from the Blue Moon Caf�, Vol. 1; Acts of Discovery; and elsewhere. Her first novel, Walking Through Shadows, was a Featured Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild and a finalist for the Florida Parishes Regional Arts Award for Literature, and was selected by The Times-Picayune as one of the best debut novels of 2002. She lives with her husband, a retired Air Force officer and Delta Air Lines Captain, in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, just down the road from the cage where a live alligator serves as the town’s main tourist attraction.

From Publishers Weekly:

Layla Jay, the endearing young narrator of Marshall's third novel (following Right as Rain), fakes salvation at the age of 13 to impress a boy at church. Religious themes play a large role in this coming-of-age tale set in the early 1960s, but the story actually revolves around a different kind of faith—a faith in people and in family, despite all their flaws. Layla Jay leads a relatively happy life in her small Mississippi town, but when her flakey alcoholic mother marries a hypocritical revivalist preacher, their home is thrown into chaos, and Layla Jay comes to realize that God answers prayers in perplexing and often painful ways. In the scattered, melodramatic first half of the book, disasters befall Layla Jay and her family one after another: her grandmother dies, her mother survives a near-fatal car accident, and Layla Jay escapes her stepfather's attempt to rape her only when her mother finishes him off with a 7-Up bottle. The second half of the novel then deepens into an exploration of the consequences of deceit and the nature of familial love. Throughout, Marshall propels the story with all-too-human characters whose faults are enormous and whose mistakes are almost inexcusable, but who are never beyond forgiveness.
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