DOLLAR DAZE

The love bug has bitten the Bottom Dollar Girls.

The Bottom Dollar Girls, who have already traipsed through two entertaining novels (A Dollar Short, 2005, etc.), are a group of Southern widows who speak their minds and who don’t let things like age keep them down. Mavis owns the Bottom Dollar Emporium, where the ladies hang out. Attalee is the 86-year-old soda jerk. Mrs. Tobias, 63, is a proper widow. Birdie is Mavis’s best friend from high school, class of ’59. And honorary member Elizabeth is their young friend, who has recently had a baby with her adoring husband, Timothy—Mrs. Tobias’s son. Just as Mavis, Birdie and Mrs. Tobias have settled into the single life, Attalee reinvents the rules by falling head-over-heels in love with the 78-year-old stud Dooley. Suddenly the other three decide that maybe, just maybe, life will be a little sweeter with a man around. Trouble is, Birdie and Mavis come to this conclusion at the same time when former high-school hottie Brew arrives back in town. The women become no longer best friends but brutal competitors. Mrs. Tobias finds herself falling in love with an adventuresome “duct doctor,” a blue-collar man, much to the dismay of her mother-in-law, who believes the man is a gold-digger. And Elizabeth is struggling with her own man: He wants her to be a stay-at-home mom, something that is making her crazy. As a class reunion and Attalee’s wedding day approach, tension is thick in Cayboo Creek.

Sweet and amusing tale of romance and lust for the older crowd.