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SECRET KEEPERS is out in paperback from Picador in May, 2010. A note from Mindy: In the garden this morning I found larkspur and zinnias sprouting in the tomato bed. Last summer’s Love-Lies-Bleeding went rogue, too, self-seeding among the squash and peppers. I find such strange bedfellows enchanting. I’m working with nature here, so I’m open to surprises. I like to see what happens. That’s pretty much how I approach writing novels. I like to see what happens. What are these characters up to now? I love it when they surprise me. Read MORE Mindy receives a 2008-2009 Individual Artist Fellowship Award in Prose from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Mindy's next novel, Secret Keepers is out, published by St. Martin's Press in May. Secret Keepers is set in a small Southern town -- a land of neglected Confederate monuments, faith-based shopping centers, and overgrown, seedy estates -- where a once-grand heirloom garden is covertly rescued, revealing a divided family’s secret lives of turmoil and yearning. Read the first chapter here. Secret Keepers named a Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection for August. "With a piquant blend of magical realism and down-home pragmatism, Friddle’s beguiling second novel is a poignant and reassuring tale of regret and redemption." "With fluid prose and telling details, Friddle deftly captures the downward pull of the past and the Southern penchant for mythmaking; transcending the easy stereotypes of Southern dysfunctional family sagas, Friddle's clan is a genuinely quirky lot with its own unlikely ideas of happiness." Secret Keepers is very much a novel about the failure of our best-laid plans, and the surprising hardiness of what hope rises next... As the long buried past comes to light, the Hanleys all must reap what they have sown, and the novel that results just blossoms." THE GARDEN ANGEL appears on NPR Morning Edition's Booksellers' Summer Reading Picks. Visit npr.org to read comments by Rona Brinlee, owner of THE BOOK MARK in Atlantic Beach, Florida, who was interviewed for the story.
THE GARDEN ANGEL is in its fourth printing and made the Southeastern Independent Booksellers' (SEBA) bestsellers' list. In Sans Souci, South Carolina, talk is cheap, real estate even more so. No one knows this better than Cutter Johanson, a gruff tomboy who waits tables, writes obits, and makes every effort, however comical and in the face of her mercenary relatives, to avert the sale of the dilapidated ancestral home. And despite her plucky resolve, all appears to be lost—until she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth, a shy and fragile academic who puts both their fates on the mend. "Mindy Friddle has a great comic touch, and her novel is a touching, heartfelt debut." "The glory of a past that may never be reclaimed is the theme of this unique and satisfying novel ...At times wonderfully comic and sad enough to provoke tears, The Garden Angel is an addictive read, and an enthralling story filled with both loss and hope." --- The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers (Fall 2004 Selection) "A comic delight...Winning characters and piquant wit, with an underpinning of graciousness: a standout." --- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Friddle has a way with the comic yet apt image...funny, down-to-earth and steeped in a sense of place." ---The Washington Post " Mindy Friddle's first novel is the literary equivalent of Grace Kelly -- smart and stylish, elegant and timeless, destined to become a classic." "Friddle writes with comic grace. THE GARDEN ANGEL is soulful and satisfying, as southern as a slice of watermelon on a hot summer day." --- Charlotte Observer "...Friddle concentrates her considerable talents on developing fully realized protagonists who earn and deserve the reader's respect." --- Booklist Reviews Here is a wonderful debut, a novel full of laugh-out-loud humor but also heartbreak as Friddle’s women struggle to honor the past while accommodating the present. Cutter Johanson is a heroine Eudora Welty would be proud to claim and one few readers will forget. THE GARDEN ANGEL is a book I did not want to end.
The Writing Room Visit A GOOD BLOG IS HARD TO FIND southernauthors.blogspot.com a group of Southern authors who blog about books, writing, new releases and more.
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SECRET KEEPERS has won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction.
