Joining us on the Strictly Southern panel at the Flowertown Players Theatre is Catherine Mann, with her new and incredibly popular Lightning in a Mason Jar.
In South Carolina, a woman discovers her aunt’s profound secrets in an emotional novel spanning decades about trauma, survival, and the bonds of female friendship by a USA Today bestselling author.
Since Bailey Rae Rigby’s adoptive aunt Winnie passed, Bent Oak, South Carolina, doesn’t have much of a hold on her anymore. So it seems.
Bailey Rae aims to settle the small estate and, armed with her aunt’s inspiring personal cookbook, buy a food truck with an ocean view in Myrtle Beach. Everything goes awry when a distraught young mother arrives in town clutching a copy of that same cookbook. Embedded inside is a code that promises a safe place in Bent Oak for desperate women on the run. For Bailey Rae it opens up a world of questions. Who really was the beloved aunt she’s known most of her life?
Winnie Ballard’s story reaches back fifty years–one of a Southern debutante’s harrowing marriage, of her escape and reinvention, and the galvanizing friendship of three resilient women who overcame their traumas, created a shelter, and found purpose. But there’s more to Winnie’s deliverance and long-held secrets than Bailey Rae imagines.
With each revelation, Bailey Rae draws on her aunt’s courage to find purpose herself. For now, whatever threats may come, Bailey Rae isn’t going anywhere.
USA Today bestseller Catherine Mann has written women’s fiction, romance, and romantic suspense for Lake Union, HQN, Harlequin series, Berkley, Tule, and Sourcebooks, with novels released in more than thirty countries. Her novels have won numerous awards, including a RITA Award, the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award, and the Bookseller’s Best Award. A College of Charleston graduate, after years of moving around the country Catherine has settled back in her home state of South Carolina with her Harley-riding husband. Empty nesters, they have a blended family of nine children, nine grandchildren, two dogs, and three feral cats, who all provide endless inspiration for new novels for her Southern set novels. Lightning in a Mason Jar is available now. The Sweet Tea Odyssey, scheduled for August 11, is available for preorder now. FMI, visit her website: CatherineMann.com