It All Comes Back to You - by Beth Duke

About the Book

Amazon #1 Best Seller (e-book): Alternating between Homecoming Queen Violet (1947) and can't-quite-find-her-crown Ronni (now), it's book club fiction at its hilarious, warm, sad, and stunning best. In the tradition of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Duke delivers an unforgettable elderly character to treasure and a young heroine to steal your hea

Book Synopsis

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 book club 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 Quotes

"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