The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society

November 26, 2012
Revisiting the busybody river town of Avalon, Ill., Gee (Friendship Bread) pens another sentimental ode to the domestic arts and their power to save women in crisis. “Scrapbooks are about memories,” Bettie, president and founder of the Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society, preaches to reluctant newcomers Connie, Yvonne, Ava, and Frances, each wrestling with painful pasts and uncertain futures. Orphan Connie, part of the kitchen help at Avalon’s must-meet-and-eat spot, Madeline’s Tea Salon, lets a troublemaking goat named Serena show her that home is where the heart is. Yvonne, one-time society dame who now works as a plumber, turns her back on a villainous family and rediscovers a lost love. Ava, the insecure single mother of a young son, the product of an affair with a married man, finds the courage to reconcile with the woman whose home she wrecked. And the unconditional love of Frances’s family helps her accept the daunting challenge of adopting a baby with a disability. But it’s Bettie’s heartbreaking battle with her failing memory that brings the women—and the town of Avalon—together to cherish both her and their past in a three-hanky nod to It’s a Wonderful Life. Gee—who also writes as Mia King (Table Manners)—gets the unapologetically schmaltzy tone just right with the irresistible premise that we can love the impossible. A surefire book club hit. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME Entertainment.

December 15, 2012
A novel featuring several ladies living in or near the small town of Avalon, Ill. The tale opens with an interesting and comedic scene of a young woman, Connie, trying to rescue a lost goat she guesses might have been abused. In this scene, we are also introduced to Madeline, who runs the town's popular teahouse, above which Madeline and Connie live. The scene then moves quickly to Isabel, who is not recovering from the trauma of her husband leaving her before he died; then to Yvonne, a plumber; then to Ava (the "other woman"); then to Frances; and so on. Perhaps these transitions from one character to another in such rapid succession comprise the author's way of recreating the ambiance of the teahouse at its busiest or the feeling of flipping through a lot of scrapbooks with portraits of a multitude of faces quickly glimpsed. The women become members of a scrapbooking club started by Bettie, who likes to sell her scrapbook decorations at the teahouse. This is a long, crowded book, and a reader who cares about these ladies with their significant problems might feel bogged down with too many details, some over-the-top strange and some completely mundane. This scrapbook of interesting, comic and tragic vignettes needs some nip and tuck to realize its full potential for passing along life lessons.

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January 1, 2013
Isabel Kidd is having enough trouble getting over her cheating almost-ex-husband's death without the interference of her busybody neighbor, Bettie Shelton, cajoling her into hosting a scrapbooking party. Ava is struggling to make ends meet for her and her son, Max, making bottle-cap jewelry. Frances Latham and her husband discover some troubling news about Mei Ling, their prospective adoptive daughter from China. And there's a goat loose behind Madeline's Tea Salon. There are many threads to this story (including a female plumber with a secret past), but, like a good scrapbooker, Gee puts them all together beautifully. Bettie is the glue that holds the residents of Avalon togetherwhether they like it or notand as she seems to unravel, the town comes together. This funny, moving book is the follow-up to Friendship Bread (2011), although The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society can stand on its own. A welcome addition to any women's-fiction collection and a good choice for fans of Debbie Macomber's knitting series. Recipes and scrapbooking tips are included.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)