Liberating Paris - by Linda Bloodworth Thomason (Paperback)

About the Book

Lost loves are reunited after 20 years when their college-aged children announce their wedding plans. As their reckless behavior progresses, they are forced to question whether their rediscovered passion is worth shattering everyone's life.

From the Back Cover

Woodrow McIlmore is leading the perfect life in Paris, Arkansas: married to his high school sweetheart, he has two wonderful children and a warm circle of family and friends. When Wood's daughter announces that she wants to marry a college classmate, Wood is stunned. But that's just the tip of the iceberg -- her intended is the son of the woman who left Wood twenty years earlier, the free-spirited Duff. And so begins a tumultuous year in Paris, as Duff returns and familiar sparks fly with her old flame. Their rekindled passion affects not only Wood and Duff but also their good friends, as they must now all decide what in their lives is worth keeping and what needs to be thrown away.

Review Quotes

"A splendid, often hilarious first novel...a thicket of sideplots give the novel a rich, layered feel. Poignant, welcoming and warmly funny, this is an irresistible page-turner." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A splendid, often hilarious first novel... Poignant, welcoming and warmly funny, this is an irresistible page-turner." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A seamless work of fiction.... It can stand with the very best of novels out of this strange country." - Anne Rivers Siddons
"Thomason takes up where Julia Sugarbaker left off, creating a range of quirky, colorful characters, endowing them with actual smarts... Thomason still has a way with women." - Philadelphia Daily News
"Liberating Paris gets high marks for being a paean to small-town America and its people, as well as a slash at the mega-stores that have made Main Streets into ghost towns... Characters have always been Thomason's forte, and many of the characters in Paris are well drawn, even memorable... There is a poignancy in the book, as if Thomason had created something she longed for herself: good friends who are always there for you, and always will be." - Indianapolis Star
"If you miss hanging out with the Sugarbakers of TV's Designing Women or Coach Wood Newton and his friends in Evening Shade, pull up a rocker and prepare to enter the new South of Liberating Paris... a cautionary comic novel about the social and cultural changes taking place across rural America today." - Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press