It All Comes Back to You: A Book Club Recommendation! Kindle Edition
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It All Comes Back to You is one of those stories you need to savor. You want to put the book down so as to have more to read tomorrow, but you can’t. It becomes attached to you, a part of you.”
Dan Brown, Author of Reunion
Alabama, 1947.
War’s over, cherry-print dresses, parking above the city lights, swing dancing.
Beautiful, seventeen-year-old Violet lives in a perfect world.
Everybody loves her.
In 2012, she’s still beautiful, charming, and surrounded by admirers.
Veronica “Ronni” Johnson, licensed practical nurse and aspiring writer, meets the captivating Violet in the assisted living facility where Violet requires no assistance, just lots of male attention. When she dies, she leaves Ronni a very generous bequest―only if Ronni completes a book about her life within one year. As she’s drawn into the world of young Violet, Ronni is mesmerized by life in a simpler time. It’s an irresistible journey filled with revelations, some of them about men Ronni knew as octogenarians at Fairfield Springs.
Struggling, insecure, flailing at the keyboard, Ronni juggles her patients, a new boyfriend, and a Samsonite factory of emotional baggage as she tries to craft a manuscript before her deadline.
But then the secrets start to emerge, some of them in person. And they don’t stop.
Everything changes.
Alternating chapters between Homecoming Queen Violet in 1947 and can’t-quite-find-her-crown Ronni in the present, IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU is Southern Fiction at its hilarious, warm, sad, outrageous, uplifting, and stunning best. In the tradition of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand and Olive Kitteridge, Duke delivers an unforgettable elderly character to treasure and a young heroine to steal your heart.
Review
“Beth Duke is one of those writers who leave you shaking your head when you’ve finished reading, muttering, ‘Dang, I wish I’d written that.’
She can spin a good yarn.
She is as Southern as grits and sweet tea.
Once you read one of her stories, you start to gravitate to her like a moth to a porch light.
It All Comes Back to You is one of those stories you need to savor. You want to put the book down so as to have more to read tomorrow, but you can’t. It becomes attached to you, a part of you. As does she.
I catch myself smiling when I’m reading her stories. They pull you in,and take you on a wild ride, but she returns you home at the end, safe and sound, and forever changed.
But for the better.
Beth Duke is a wordsmith of the best kind and her stories rank with the best in classic Southern fiction.”
– Dan Brown, Author of The Lunch Box and Reunion
“I laughed a lot, I also cried in places, I felt an affinity for the characters – and there are many – and their sorrows. I loved Violet and how she took the lemons life had given her and made a lot of lemonade for others who had nothing. I loved Ronni and her wonderful, dry, self-deprecating humor. This warm, funny book will surprise you a lot. It did me because I was expecting a simple, charming story about a nurse who has to write a book about her benefactor’s life. Yes, it’s about that, but so much more. Please don’t miss out on this wonderful story. I was sad when it ended.”
– Official 5-Star Readers Favorite Editorial Review
“The author has crafted a beautiful novel that takes the reader into another time and demonstrates how the past is critical in understanding who we are. We never fully understand the motivations underlying our choices. However, the past is an intrinsic part of who we are. This novel will absorb you and touch your heart. This is an unforgettable book crafted by a brilliant author.
I highly recommend this book to readers who like to get emotionally involved with the people they meet in novels. When reading leads to actual tears and laughing out loud, I have found a winner. Very well written, with such pain and love. I can’t remember the last time I read a book that made me feel so much. This is a beautiful story of love, friendship and family. The characters stories are interwoven, and flow effortlessly. The story is both heartwarming as well as heartbreaking at the same time.”
– Shelley’s Book Nook
“With an engaging storyline and deftly-woven characters, IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU by Beth Duke is the kind of book that will have you recommending it to your friends purely so you can have someone else to discuss it with.
Ronni enjoys her job as a carer for the most part but deep down she would love to be a writer. When her favourite patient, Violet, passes away, she leaves Ronni with the means to follow her dreams in more than one way. Alongside some money, Violet has also shared her life with Ronni – the ups and downs, the tragedies and the love that she has experienced in Alabama after the war right up to the day she died. Violet always shone no matter where she was and she knows that Ronni can make her life a bestseller now that she is gone. But as Ronni begins to dig a little deeper into Violet’s life there are secrets waiting to be unearthed and along the way Ronni’s life will change too …
IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU by Beth Duke is the kind of grand story that sweeps you along in its descriptions and makes the past feel like the present as you read it. The story jumps between the two timelines which worked really well and there was never a moment when I wanted to put this book down. I smiled, I cried, and my heart may have even broken a little at times, which is always the perfect sign to me that a book is special and IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU by Beth Duke is definitely special. A must-read for fiction fans who love a dual timeline and excellent characters.”
– Books Of All Kinds
From the Author
BOOK GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS are available for free download at bethduke.com
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