Change Baby - Softcover

June Spence's stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Southern Review, Seventeen, and The Oxford American. A winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Prize, she lives with her husband, the writer Scott Huler.

In this impressive first novel, a young woman discovers skeletons long hidden in the family closet. Avie Goss was born 24 years ago, just before her mother's menopause and long after her two "more suitably timed siblings." She trusted that once she left her hometown of Regina, N.C., "the future would cough up its gems," but she's now a recovering alcoholic in a dysfunctional relationship with a married man. When her 73-year-old mother, Mabry, is injured in a house fire, Avie returns home to care for her. She seeks out Mabry's cousin and oldest friend, Zephra, curious about the rift between them, and is told that the two women aren't really kin. From this first revelation, more secrets unfold, including the true nature of the bonds between Zephra, Mabry and her dead husband, and even between Avie and her siblings. Spence's prose is deft, forceful and quirky ("my thoughts darted in every direction, small, excitable fishes"), but never overbearing, and her alternating narrators (Avie, Zephra and Mabry) have delightful voices. And when sparks fly between the agnostic Avie and a young pastor, Spence handily provides comic relief and the pleasures of young love. Despite an ending in which loose ends are tied up a little too tidily, Spence, who garnered much praise for her 1999 collection, MissingWomen and Others, delivers a true winner.
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