The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree

Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she's wandered throughout the South, working in a Louisiana circus and as a hootchy kootch dancer in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she's allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother's Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.

Disguised by years in exile and a name she found on a gravestone, Genevieve intends only to visit briefly and leave. But a chance meeting with a guilt-ridden young Vietnam veteran draws her into more unexpected connections. Her hard-won independence inspires an abused woman and her daughters to find their own path to empowerment, and a hypocritical preacher is brought to a long-deserved reckoning.

With undertones of magical realism and dark humor, here is a powerful story of discovering--and sometimes rediscovering--one's place in the world, and the unexpected challenges and gifts that present themselves along the way.