I just finished The All Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg. Anything by Fannie Flagg is funny, has a bit of a mystery to it, and they’re just plain wonderful. This particular story has two separate, but intertwined stories going on at the same time. One in the present, and one in the past. One of the characters in the book was in the WASPS in WWII, the first group of women military pilots. This book gives a lot of insight into that program, a program that was practically hidden from common knowledge until recently. This book is also a story of a woman coming to grips with her own identity, something that is revealed to her when she gets a call from the post office saying that she has to sign for a registered letter. Sometimes things that seem perfectly clear and obvious are not what they seem at all.
And right before that book, I read The Day of the Storm by Rosamunde Pilcher. It’s the story of a young British woman who was brought up rather abruptly by her single mother. The mother has just passed away after revealing some very interesting information to Rebecca, including the fact that her mother has left some precious pieces of antique furniture at the home of her Grandfather, a man she’s never met and had assumed was dead. So she travels to Cornwall England to meet her Grandfather and to find out more about her and her mother’s mysterious past.
Also, if you want to start an excellent series (they can be read as separate entities, but it’s much more fulfilling to read them in order) try the Miss Julia series by Ann B. Ross. This series is about a Southern woman of certain age who finds out that her recently deceased husband was up to no good during their marriage, even though Miss Julia is a proper woman, a pillar of society, it turns out that her husband was carrying out nefarious acts behind her back. And although she’s lived frugally all her life, it turns out that her hubby was also hiding his wealth from her, so that’s a relief. Or at least it was until she finds out that her husband didn’t leave all of the money to Miss Julia. The rest of the story, and subsequent books, involves Julia learning to survive and thrive as a single, older lady, in proper society, while uncovering all sorts of things about her husband, his past and other goings on in her small, proper town. She also learns lessons about romance, tolerance, compassion and finance. All of this happens whilst juggling social engagements and trying to solve a mystery that has popped up. Miss Julia cannot help herself when it comes to mysteries, big and small. She is surrounded by a whole cast of wonderful characters, the townspeople of Abbottsville, North Carolina.