Enjoyable Listen

Finished September 9
Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson, read by the author
I picked this off the new book shelf at work, having never heard of the author. Well, now I am a fan. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, sometimes turning the engine off, and leaving the CD on to finish a section before getting out at my destination. This is a very "Southern" novel, from the reader's voice to the content. Ro Grandee is a young married housewife in Amarillo, Texas, occasionally helping out in her father-in-law's gun store, where her husband Tom works. His father controls Tom by promises of future success based on hard work and limited wages now, but lives well himself. Tom takes out his frustrations on Ro, who literally rolls with the punches. But Ro was born Rose Mae Lolly, in Alabama, and grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father. Rose Mae's mother left them when she was eight, and then she became the prime target for her father's violence. She learned to be tough and a good shot with a gun.
When Ro meets a gypsy at the airport, and gets her cards read, she realizes the truth in the gypsy's statement that Ro's husband will kill her if she doesn't kill him first.
Growing desperate, Rose Mae first looks to the men in her past and then realizes that that line of thinking just leaves her with more problems. She runs for her life with her pawpy's old gun, and her hounddog Fat Gretel.
This book is funny, poignant and gripping. I am now waiting to read her earlier book Gods in Alabama.