Lynn Pruett's novel drops us into a small town during a blistering Alabama summer where Hattie Bohannon has just opened a truck stop. A magnet for transients of questionable background and inclination, and run by Hattie's nubile daughters, the truck stop is an uneasy presence in tradition-bound, gossipy Maridoches.Hattie is quietly mourning her recently dead husband and trying to determine the contours of her self alone, but too often her strong-willed daughters - whose burgeoning sexuality is attracting attention from the truck-stop patrons - keep her at loose ends. In a season of unrelenting heat, desire gestates and hovers over Maridoches, threatening the moral equilibrium of the small church-town. Then Hattie's oldest daughter, Jessamine, is falsely accused of prostitution, and the reverend conveniently declares war against the immorality of the Bohannons and their establishment. What ensues is a clash of wills and values that will leave no one unaffected. Read Less