Quite a Year for Plums

Anyone who has read the best-selling Mama Makes Up Her Mind or listened to Bailey White's commentaries on NPR knows that she is a storyteller of inimitable wit and charm. Now, in her stunningly accomplished first novel, she introduces us to the peculiar yet lovable people who inhabit a small town in south Georgia. Meet serious, studious Roger, the peanut pathologist and unlikely love object of half the town's women. Meet Roger's ex-mother-in-law, Louise, who teams up with an ardent typographer in an attempt to attract outer-space invaders with specific combinations of letters and numbers. And meet Della, the bird artist who captivates Roger with the sensible but enigmatic notes she leaves on things she throws away at the Dumpster ("This fan works, but makes a clicking sound and will not oscillate").

Heartbreakingly tender, often hilarious, Quite a Year for Plums is a delectable treat from a writer who has been called a national treasure.

"White will transport readers to that place where the language is languid, the bees hum . . . and everybody-- in a nice kind of way--is a little off-kilter." --San Francisco Chronicle

"An enchanting work, as delicately stitched as a spider web." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A novel of many perspectives. . . . On one level, Quite a Year for Plums is about chickens and peanut cultivars and pine- straw fires; on another, it's about art and impermanence and freedom." --The New York Times Book Review

"Deliciously funny. . . . As tasty as a 12-egg poundcake, pungent as tea olive and crafty as a crow." --Atlanta Journal-Constitution