Karin Gillespie A Dollar Short

A Dollar Short

Karin Gillespie

Simon & Schuster, Aug 2005, $19.95

ISBN: 0743250117

In Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, Wagon Wheel waitress Chiffon Butrell wins a video store's Be-a-Movie-Star contest, but cannot go to Hollywood because her baby is ill. Instead her handsome husband Lonnie heads west where he meets actress Janie-Lynn Lauren and forgets his wife and three kids back home.

Chiffon loses her job and she cannot pay her bills because Lonnie has had his paycheck sent to California. Her friends want to help, but they are distracted with other matters. Elizabeth is about to give birth and the remaining Bottom Dollar Girls sisterhood are busy raising money for the Cayboo Creek Senior Center. Chiffon turns to her estranged sister Chenille to help her with her crisis accentuated by the media descending on Cayboo Creek like vultures seeking dirt on Lonnie.

The sequel to the BOTTOM DOLLAR GIRLS, A DOLLAR SHORT is a fine look at modern life in a small rural southern community invaded by the outside world. The storyline is amusing as the Bottom Dollar sisterhood goes about protecting their own, but also serious with the serious subplot of Lonnie abandoning his children besides his wife. Readers will appreciate this regional slice of life tale especially when the barbarian horde assaults the townsfolk who treat the outsiders like parasites that need special handling. This is one contemporary that is not A DOLLAR SHORT of fun.

Harriet Klausner