A perennial book club favorite across the United States and Canada, It All Comes Back to You is a Southern Fiction classic that packs a very surprising twist at the end.
The first few lines?
"Audrey Marie Haynes Ledbetter was pitching a full blown, deep fried Southern hissy fit. She squirmed back and forth in her wheelchair yelling, 'There are vines in my vaginny! Vines in my vaginny!' She struggled valiantly to stand.
I eased her albino cricket body back down gently. “I’m sure there aren’t, Mrs. Ledbetter. That’s not possible. We would notice.”
She narrowed her eyes and shot me a look designed to fork-pierce my jugular. “You nurses don’t notice anything! There are vines. VINES, I’m telling you.” Audrey paused for a wheezy breath and added in a conspiratorial hiss, “In my vaginny.”
Donna, our director of nursing, poked her head into the hall. “Ronni, before you leave, schedule a gyno with Dr. Aronson.”
“Really, Donna? She’s been going on about this for over a month.”
“We can’t have her waking up with morning glory twisted around her legs, can we?” Donna nodded at Audrey and smiled. It was easy to be indulgent when you spent your days in a rose-scented office eating chocolate.
Audrey Marie Haynes Ledbetter calmed immediately and flitted onto a new subject, asking Kait sweetly, “How soon is lunch?”
My shift partner Kait blew her blonde bangs upward, ignoring the question. She muttered, “We could just call in a gardener. Or maybe a shot of Round-Up?”
Kait has the only sense of humor at Fairfield Springs more wicked than mine. It’s necessary for preserving sanity in the workplace."
Themes include the power of female friendship, the impact of kindness on the world, the contrast between post-WWII America and the present, elderly in nursing homes, domestic violence, and most universally, love in all its forms.
Book discussion guide is available on the homepage of this website under the book cover. Beth is delighted to join book clubs for discussion; please email beth@bethduke.com to check calendar availability.
Featured by women.com as a top "Laugh Out Loud Funny" selection for book clubs
Southern Fiction, book club fiction, female friendship, humor
ISBN 978-0578448831
Available on Amazon and in fine bookstores everywhere