If Flannery O’Connor were alive today she would be knocking Joshilyn Jackson’s door down to gift her a peacock.  Then I imagine they would sit and talk about Catholic guilt and Southern humor.

I fell in love with Joshilyn Jackson when I read Gods in Alabama.  I don’t think there is a writer out there that writes better beginnings than Jackson, and not many writers can sustain the tension and suspense and characterization quite like she can.

Someone Else’s Love Story: A Novel suggests merely by title and cover to be a blithe foray into women’s fiction.  I thought maybe she was wanting to write something easy after her last few novels.

Y’all.  Y’ALL.  This is no joke.  For a cursory reading, it’s a good story.  Shandi Pierce is a 21-year-old mother of an intellectually gifted toddler son.  She decides to move from rural Georgia to Atlanta so that he can attend a pre-school for gifted children.  On her way she is caught in the middle of a hold-up in a convenience store on the side of the interstate.  It is here that she enters someone else’s love story.  Only she doesn’t know it.  She believes it to be her love story- a love story that was slung from destiny and a .32.

It is during this hold-up that she meets William Ashe, a tower of strength and masculinity.  He’s also a pragmatist with an unfaltering belief in science.  To him destiny is merely a series of personal choices.  He’s also emotionally wounded.  So when he finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun he knows that his choice is his destiny, and he chooses to defend Shandi and her son because he is very much in the middle of the tragedy of his own love story.

Throw in two jealous friends who like to meddle, an alleged rapist, a wicked step-mother, and a precocious toddler, and you’ve got yourself a ballgame.

That’s the cursory reading.

If you’re caught up on your religious guilt and Bible stories, well.  WELL.  There is a virgin birth, a resurrection, communions, a savior, a devil, and more  religious humor than even Ms. O’Connor herself could take.

Someone Else’s Love Story: A Novel tops my list of the best reads of 2013.  It’s on shelves now.  There is a holiday weekend coming up.  Order the book.  Find a quiet place and read Someone Else’s Love Story: A Novel

Then eat pie and remember I told you so.

Oh, and you’ll want to read her short story, My Own Miraculous: A Short Story too.
See y’all!