Charlottesville Words

From New Dominion Bookshop:
New Dominion Bookshop will host Susan Gregg Gilmore for a discussion and book-signing of her new novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, on Tuesday, February 26 at 5:30 pm

If I had to make a comparison, I would compare Susan Gregg Gilmore to Fannie Flagg, but Gilmore more than holds her own. This is an unusually engaging novel by a very fine writer who knows exactly what she is doing.— Lee Smith

Here is a witty and unforgettable debut novel about a young Southern girl caught between two worlds, and coming of age in the space therein. It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. Daughter of Ringgold’s Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.

Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, she immediately packs her bags, leaving behind her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before long, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home and, as personal events alter her perspective — and change grips Ringgold — she begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

Intelligent, charming, and utterly readable, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen is an inspirational debut from a talented new literary voice.