GroVont

Banished to the hinterlands of Wyoming, rebellious Lydia Callahan and her thirteen-year-old son Sam have no choice but to cope. But while Lydia drinks and talks to the moose head on the wall, Sam finds a friend in local girl Maurey Pierce. One of the wildest, raunchiest, most heartfelt coming-of-age novels of the past thirty years, Skipped Parts puts Tim Sandlin in the upper echelon of contemporary comic novelists.

Everyone in GroVont, Wyoming, knows everybody else's business, but Maurey Pierce Talbot is practically famous around town. Sunk low since her father died, whiskey- specifically Yukon Jack-is her best friend. When she makes the mistake of a lifetime, Maurey finds herself looking up from rock bottom. So when two bumbling ex-drunks need to get cross-country with a trailer full of illegal beer, Maurey takes the wheel. Sometimes you just need to get out of town. And sometimes you need to get lost in order to get found.

One of five men could be Sam Callahan's father. Is knowing the truth worth the havoc he'll cause trying to find out? Laid low by divorce-the result of an endless stream of poor choices-Sam decides it's time he met his dad. But his quest to meet the men and discover the truth does more than just shake up the five likely suspects-it pretty much napalms the lives of everyone he meets.

LYDIA, Tim Sandlin's acclaimed return to his GroVont characters, was called 'Uplifting...immensely satisfying' by the New York Times Book Review and a 'gem of a novel as audacious as it is sentimental' in a starred Booklist review. Managing the Virgin Birth Home for Unwed Mothers means the women in Sam Callahan's life keep his world interesting. But it's his family members that really take the cake. His daughter may be having a nervous breakdown, and his mother's just out of prison for attempting to poison the president's dog. And when they hit the road with a geriatric, an adoptive son trying to discover his parentage, and an enraged psychopath on their tails, all hell may break loose. And you thought your family was strange... Fifteen years ago, Tim Sandlin concluded his 'GroVont' trilogy, a string of books that included a New York Times Notable Book and earned such accolades as 'funny and compelling' (LA Times), 'zany' (Cosmo), and 'dazzling and moving' (New York Times). But some characters call a writer back. Welcome to the ribald, rollicking, and sometimes peculiar world of Tim Sandlin's GroVont, Wyoming, where family is always paramount, no matter how strange.