A brilliant debut novel from a New York Times bestselling author about a transplanted wife from Boston who arrives in Florida in the 1960s, starts a literary salon, and shakes up the status quo. Eighty-year-old Dora, the narrator of a story that began a half century earlier, is bonding with an unlikely set of friends, including Jackie Hart, a restless middle-aged wife and mother from Boston, who gets into all sorts of trouble when her family moves to a small, sleepy town in Collier County, Florida, circa 1962. With humor and insight the novel chronicles the awkward North-South cultural divide as Jackie, this hapless but charming “Yankee,” looks for some excitement in her life by accepting an opportunity to host a local radio show where she creates a mysterious, late-night persona, “Miss Dreamsville,” and by launching a reading group—the Collier County Women’s Literary Society—thus sending the conservative and racially segregated town into uproar. The only townspeople who venture to join are regarded as outsiders at best—a young gay man, a divorced woman, a poet, and a young black woman who dreams of going to college. This brilliant fiction debut by Amy Hill Hearth, a New York Times bestselling author, brings to life unforgettable characters who found the one thing that eluded them as individuals:a place in the world. Inspired by a real person, Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society will touch the heart of anyone and everyone who has ever felt like an outsider longing to fit in. Naples, Florida, was nothing but a tiny backwater in the 1960s. Dora Witherspoon, called the Turtle Lady for her tendency to rescue injured snapping turtles, is resigned to being back in town. The scandal of her divorce is soon eclipsed by the arrival of Jackie Hart, a middle-aged, fabulous, and dissatisfied Boston housewife. With the help of the town librarian, Jackie forms the Collier County Women’s Literary Society. The reading group (or salon, as she insists) attracts the town misfits: Plain Jane, a spinster with a secret career; Robbie-Lee Simpson, the town’s only gay man; Miss Bailey White, fresh out of prison for killing her husband; and Priscilla Harmon, a young African American maid with dreams of higher education. Jackie stirs up more than just literary discussion as she adjusts to southern ways, running afoul of her husband’s boss and the local Klan chapter. The so-called misfits of the town are good company, although a few very early revelations eliminate some much-needed tension. This first novel is a sweet story of female bonding and southern grit that will remind readers of Fannie Flagg. --Susan Maguire "Sometimes, an exceptional writer finds an exceptional premise, and the result is a truly exceptional book. Such is the case with 'Miss Dreamsville'...The writing is brilliant, especially the dialogue through which the characters are defined." - Philip K. Jason/Southern Literary Review "This first novel is a sweet story of female bonding and southern grit that will remind readers of Fannie Flagg." - Booklist/American Library Association Amy Hill Hearth is the author of Miss Dreamsville and the Collier County Women’s Literary Society and Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County , in addition to author or coauthor of seven nonfiction books, including Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years , the New York Times bestseller-turned-Broadway-play. Hearth, a former writer for The New York Times , began her career as a reporter at a small daily newspaper in Florida, where she met her future husband, Blair (a Collier County native). She is a graduate of the University of Tampa. Miss Dreamsville One My name is Dora Witherspoon but most folks know me as the Turtle Lady. A long time ago, I rescued a snapping turtle the size of a truck tire from the middle of Highway 41, a move deemed so foolish it became local legend. I can’t say I’m partial to it, but here in the South, nicknames stick like bottomland mud. I’d like to tell you a story from my younger days. I’ve been a storyteller my whole life, but I wasn’t ready to tell this one until now. It happened fifty years ago—in 1962. Parts of it are hard for me to share, but the fact is that I’m old now—eighty years of age, if you must know—and probably running out of time. I want young’uns to know about my time and place, the people I knew, and a world that’s all but gone. I want them to know that one person can come along and change your life, and that being a misfit, as I was, doesn’t mean you won’t find friends and your place in the world. HER NAME WAS JACKIE HART, and the first time I set eyes on her was across the counter at the post office. She’d moved to Collier County with her husband and kids from, of all places, Boston. Before we knew it, she turned things upside down faster than you can say “Yankee carpetbagger.” From the get-go, Jackie was a troublemaker in the eyes of the town fathers, but