Adelaide Piper

Adelaide Piper, small-town Gen-X debutante and renegade poetess, calls her own tune. But Piper's tunes lead her and those closest to her to dangerous places. Tragedy and heartbreak mean a return to the very ground that she once cursed, though with a deeper appreciation for that Southern heritage, however infirm it may be. From Publishers Weekly Debutante Adelaide Piper grows up in the small industrial community of Williamstown, S.C., with dreams of attending a faraway prestigious college and honing her poetry skills. She soon arrives at Nathaniel Buxton University, an elite liberal arts school in the mountains of Virginia, only to discover it to be more about fraternity parties and fashion than learning. When a hazing incident goes awry, one promising life is snuffed out and another ruined. Then, a casual date turns ugly, and Adelaide loses her moorings. Her parents aren't helpful: Dad is obsessed with an Amway-type pyramid scheme; her mother with her failing marriage and two difficult younger daughters. There's more fodder for tragedy-perhaps too much-as one of Adelaide's best friends grapples with an eating disorder and another grieves an abortion. As she discovers religious faith-in a conversion scene that is expected, but nicely done- Adelaide begins to recover the core of who she is. Hart's faith-based debut is intelligent and promising.(June 13)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* Adelaide Piper, precocious and overconfident, leaves her little South Carolina town for a fancy liberal-arts school. She seems to be taking the place by storm when she is date-raped. Of course, this being Christian fiction, Adelaide is a virgin and a bit of a prude, too, but, anyhow, all her world comes crashing down. Her grades fall, and she fights depression. She tries on feminist politics but remains troubled. Maybe there is no cure, unless that boring little town she thought she escaped has some merit after all. Hart, with humor and a nice southern accent, has written a fine follow-up to her highly praised first novel,Grace at Low Tide (2005).John MortCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved