Michael Lee West's indomitable G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised in the South) are back -- enduring rough times with all the grace and outrageous flair expected of true Southern heroines. Bitsy Wentworth -- fleeing yet another relationship nightmare in a “borrowed” red Corvette, with her baby daughter and a recently acquired “demon child” -- has an APB out on her for attempted murder (she broke her ex-husband's nose with a frozen slab of ribs that she purchased at the Piggly Wiggly). Her mama, Dorothy, is writing letters to First Ladies from inside the Central State Asylum, while Aunt Clancy Jane has completed her inevitable progression from hippie to local Crazy Cat Lady. Three generations of unforgettable Crystal Falls, Tennessee, women -- and the men they attract, enrage, and confound -- are courageously plowing through tumultuous lives of compound disaster . . . and hoping the chaos the next wrong step leads to won't be insurmountable. “Not since Flannery O’Connor’s first book has a debut novel by a young Southerner been so filled with wry humor and humanity, so precisely right in its idioms, and so distinctive in its voices.” - St. Petersburg Times “Michael Lee West writes like the Morman Tabernacle Choir sings―a thousand voices, all different, all together.” - Diana Gabaldon Michael Lee West's indomitable G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised in the South) are back -- enduring rough times with all the grace and outrageous flair expected of true Southern heroines. Bitsy Wentworth -- fleeing yet another relationship nightmare in a “borrowed” red Corvette, with her baby daughter and a recently acquired “demon child” -- has an APB out on her for attempted murder (she broke her ex-husband's nose with a frozen slab of ribs that she purchased at the Piggly Wiggly). Her mama, Dorothy, is writing letters to First Ladies from inside the Central State Asylum, while Aunt Clancy Jane has completed her inevitable progression from hippie to local Crazy Cat Lady. Three generations of unforgettable Crystal Falls, Tennessee, women -- and the men they attract, enrage, and confound -- are courageously plowing through tumultuous lives of compound disaster . . . and hoping the chaos the next wrong step leads to won't be insurmountable. Michael Lee West is the author of Mad Girls in Love , Crazy Ladies , American Pie , She Flew the Coop , and Consuming Passions . She lives with her husband on a rural farm in Tennessee with three bratty Yorkshire terriers, a Chinese Crested, assorted donkeys, chickens, sheep, and African Pygmy goats. Her faithful dog Zap (above) was the inspiration for a character in the novel. Mad Girls in Love A Novel By Michael Lee West HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Michael Lee West All right reserved. ISBN: 0060985062 Chapter One Bitsy To-Do List October 17, 1972 Get out of bed. - Or stay in bed and write down my side of the story. - Find an inexpensive (but smart!) lawyer. - Buy Summer Blonde to touch up my roots. Notorious. That's what the Times-Picayune called me. And the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, "Wicked Bitsy Wentworth looks like a blond Barbie -- shapely on the exterior, but underneath the plastic is the razorsharp brain of a teenaged criminal." My name is Lillian Beatrice McDougal Wentworth -- Bitsy forshort -- and this is my side of the story: It began two months ago on a hotafternoon in August. The day started out normal. First, I washed mybaby's hair in the kitchen sink. Jennifer has quite a lot of hair for an eightmonth-old, so it took a while. I wrapped her in a towel and we dancedaround the room. From the top of the refrigerator, the radio was playingStrauss's "On the Beautiful Blue Danube." Normally I would be listeningto Neil Diamond, but ever since Claude and I had renewed our marriagevows -- six weeks ago, to be exact -- I was determined to improve myself.After all, Claude was a Wentworth, and his people have been cultured forthe last hundred years. Which shouldn't be confused with buttermilk orbacterial cultures; I'm talking about sophistication. I'd tried to sound stylishby memorizing words from the dictionary, but sometimes I mispronouncedthe words, and Claude's mother, Miss Betty, would call medown. But I could stand to listen to classical music, as long as I didn'thave to say the composers' names. The baby stirred in my arms, sending up sweet gusts of baby shampoo,and we waltzed to the other side of the kitchen, stepping throughpuddles of sunlight, which poured through the long windows. Jenniferlaughed. It came from her belly and sounded a little like Phyllis Diller,but in a cute sort of way. After I fluffed the baby's hair and dressed her ina pink sunsuit, I carried her into the living room. I picked up a blanketand was just starting to play peek-a-boo, when I happened to glance atthe clock. It was nearly three P.M., and Claude liked his supper on thetable by five sharp. I put the baby in the playpen, hurried into thekitchen, and flung