First Thursday Fiction Book Group: Dollbaby

Join us as we Skype with Laura Lane McNeal, author of Dollbaby. The Skype session is a good chance for members of our book clubs to “meet” authors that Skype with individual book groups.

Synopsis: A big-hearted coming-of-age debut set in Civil Rights-era New Orleans—a novel of Southern eccentricity, secrets, and laughter.

When Ibby Bell’s father dies in an accident in the summer of 1964, her mother unceremoniously deposits Ibby in New Orleans with her eccentric grandmother, Fannie, and throws in her father’s urn for good measure. Fannie’s rundown Victorian mansion is like no place Ibby has ever been, and Fannie—who has a tendency to end up in the local asylum every once in a while—is like no one she has ever met. Fannie’s black cook, Queenie, who makes the best gumbo and redfish courtboullion in New Orleans, has run Fannie’s household ever since it was Fannie’s household, and her sassy daughter, Dollbaby, has big dreams and an even bigger mouth. Between them, Queenie and Dollbaby take it upon themselves to initiate Ibby into the ways of the South, both in its grand traditions and its darkest secrets.

For Fannie’s own family history is fraught with tragedy, hidden behind the closed doors in her ornate Uptown mansion. It will take Ibby’s arrival to begin to unlock the mysteries there as she uncovers the ghosts of her family’s past. And it will take Queenie and Dollbaby’s hard-won wisdom to show Ibby that sometimes, family can be found in the least expected places.

Told through the eyes of a young girl learning to understand race for the first time, Dollbaby is a love letter to New Orleans—bringing to life a city in the midst of Civil Rights-era unrest. By turns uplifting and funny, poignant and full of verve, Dollbaby is a novel of Southern eccentricity, secrets and charm—a glimpse into a sparkling world that readers will take to their hearts.