Synopses & Reviews
Expelled from thirteen boarding schools in the past five years, seventeen-year-old Jane Fontaine Ventouras is returning to her Southern roots, and the small town of Bienville, Alabama, where ladies always wear pearls, nothing says hospitality like sweet tea
and pimento cheese sandwiches, and competing in the annual Magnolia Maid Pageant is every girl’s dream.
But Jane is what you might call an anti-belle—more fishnets and tattoos than sugar and spice. The last thing on her mind is joining the Magnolia Maid brigade and parading around town in
a dress so big she can’t even fi t through doors. So when she finds herself up to her ears in ruffl es and etiquette lessons, she’s got one mission: Escape.
What’s a hipster to do? Will Jane survive Bienville boot camp intact or will they—gasp!—make a Southern belle out of her yet?
About the Author
Crickett Rumley graduated with an MFA in film from Columbia University and teaches screenwriting at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. As a screenwriter, she adapted Susan Taylor Chehak’s Smithereens for Killer Films and Julia Alvarez’s “The Suitor” for Gigantic Pictures and PBS. Crickett’s experiences growing up in the South inspired this debut novel. Though she now lives in California with her crazy little dog, Crickett is constantly plotting ways to get home to the Pamlico River in eastern North Carolina for barbecue, sweet tea, and Aunt Vail’s rum cake.