Pearline S Pretty Good Year

Pearline LaWanda Nicolls (Mrs. Oscar Wayne Nicolls) will tell you that she is not the town busy-body. As she tells the girls at the Curly Q, with everything she has to do she certainly has no time for idleness or gossiping. She works part time at the Stop N Buy and helps her friend, Carmella, clean houses. The rest of her time is spent trying to take care of her own house and family and helping her husband – a proud twenty year employee at the city sanitation plant - try to make ends meet and keep the wolves from the door. Of course, she also must contend with an on-going rivalry with an uppity sister, a son who is in danger of becoming religious and thirteen large dogs, and the rigors of being a volunteer in an election campaign. Then there is the fact that her mamma suddenly goes missing and then reappears with information that Pearline could well do without. Add this to the fact that Pearline finds herself deeply involved in the events surrounding the murder of a popular high school coach and the subsequent trial of the accused killer, and an ordinary year for Pearline becomes quite unforgettable.

The author focuses on the marketing perspective of the topic and illustrates how women's roles in society have shifted during the past century. Among the key issues explored is a peculiar dichotomy of American advertising that served as a conservative reflection of society and, at the same time, became an underlying force of progressive social change. The study shows how advertisers of housekeeping products perpetuated the Happy Homemaker stereytype while tobacco and cosmetics marketers dismantled women's stereotypes to create an entirely new type of consumer.

In this sequel to the novel, Southern Gospel, the residents of Truman County are forced to deal with the fallout from a sensational murder. The fact that the victim is one of the most prominent citizens of the county is shocking enough but when an arrest is made for the crime, its an even bigger surprise. As is to be expected, speculation abounds concerning motive and method. A wide variety of the county population, ranging from teenagers to senior citizens, becomes involved in the investigation and subsequent trial which is not a typical one even by Truman County standards. Against this background, Old Man Teke Thomas and Vern L. Upshaw two well-known Truman County men - are forced to deal with problems of their own, problems that in their own way will have great effects on the general welfare of Truman County. And, as was shown in Southern Gospel, Old Man Teke and Vern L. have their own unique approaches to the solutions of those problems.