The Ladies Farm

by Viqui Litman

Genres: Family Life; Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Steel Magnolias meets The First Wives Club in a touching and hilarious novel of friendship, love, sex, dreams, and good hair.

After you've raised the kids, been widowed or divorced once or twice, or even if -- especially if -- you've been married for a few decades, you need a rest. The Ladies Farm offers relaxation, exercise, crafts classes, and a fully equipped beauty salon. This idyllic retreat set in the hills of Sydonia, Texas, is owned and operated by four friends: Pauline, the resident earth mother; Rita, the oft-married hairdresser; Della, a plain-spoken divorcee; and the younger businesswoman, Kat.

When Barbara, widow of Richard -- a man who had a great love of womankind -- moves in, all hell breaks loose at the Ladies Farm. Turns out that all Richard's ex-lovers live in Texas; in fact, more than one of them resides right at the Ladies Farm.

Take five women of a certain age, one piece of prime real estate, and one dead man who had a lot of love to give, and you have a rollicking, rambunctious novel about women who are old enough to know what they want out of life and young enough to get it.

Release date: February 8, 2012

Publisher: Crown

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

Oh, joy! thought Della Brewer when Barbara Morrison pulled her red Thunderbird up to the curb in front of the Ladies Farm. My lover's widow come to disturb my life in the country.
        
Della held her seat on the squeaky glider and concentrated on the Times editorial. She had a deal with Dave Eleston, who was kind of a Methodist ringer, singing in a Fort Worth church choir for their televised early service even though he lived in Sydonia and had never been a Methodist. Della prepared the ads for Dave's Quick Stop, which ran weekly in the Sydonia Tribune. In exchange for this service, Dave brought the New York Times and the Washington Post back from Fort Worth every Sunday morning.
        
Della thought Dave drove the hour from Sydonia to Fort Worth and back again every Sunday just for the chance to catch a glimpse of Rita, his ex-wife, who operated the hair salon at the Ladies Farm and lived in the room over the solarium. Since divorcing Dave, she had remarried her first husband and only recently re-divorced him. Dave drew encouragement from this and spent as many hours as he could Sunday mornings after church sitting on the Ladies Farm porch, hoping Rita would spend a few minutes with him. But Sunday, as Rita reminded everyone, was the only morning she could sleep late without someone showing up with a hair crisis.
        
So after Dave had come and gone, Della lounged on the front porch with a carafe of coffee and several pounds of newspapers. Meanwhile, Rita slept, and the others--Pauline and Kat--having awakened early and breakfasted wisely, were out doing something useful. Which meant that Della would have to greet Barbara when she reached the porch.
        
She didn't care, really. Richard had been dead over a year and, even when he'd been alive, Della had stopped hating Barbara. He stayed with Barbara because he wanted to, Della reminded herself. He wanted to be married to her more than he wanted to be with you.
        
Okay, maybe she hated Barbara a little.
        
But who wouldn't? A rich, fat bitch, waddling up the walk in some sort of bronze silk pajamas, the sun glittering off her gold chains. She hadn't even caught on that it wasn't chic anymore to gold-plate the trim on your car. Let alone that really rich people drove a Lexus or BMW, not a Thunderbird, and that those cars were silver or white, not bright red. How could you not hate her?
        
Barbara looked up at Della on the porch and smiled. "Della, you look gorgeous. How do you do it?"
        
Della just hated her more. Why shouldn't Barbara be kind? She had everything: the money, the house, the jewelry. She was Richard's widow. Della was only his secret love.
        
Della smiled and leaned even further into the glider cushions. "Must be the clean country living," she said as she did a quick inventory. Barbara was right about one thing: Della knew she looked much better than Barbara. I'm way thinner, she thought. My skin's smoother. My eyes were always better. And I have the good sense not to make myself up like a circus performer. "Certainly not anything I do on purpose."
        
Barbara waved her hand to dismiss the comment as false modesty, causing her bracelets to clank. She mounted the two steps and settled with a small groan into the cushioned rattan chair that, with the glider, formed one of the three conversation groupings on the porch.
        
Tiny eyes, Della thought. Glittering brown buttons surrounded by flesh. In younger days, Barbara's porcelain skin had been set off by a head of shimmering chestnut hair, but even that subtlety had been abandoned for a mass of flaming orange, creating a vivid halo even on the shaded porch. Della rested the paper in her lap, but she did not speak again and a few seconds passed while Barbara settled in.
        
She's staying, thought Della as she smoothed her denim skirt. She's burrowing.
        
"So," Barbara resumed the conversation. "What's new with you?"
        
Della could not remember Barbara visiting the Ladies Farm. She must have visited Pauline and Hugh long ago, Della mused, when Hugh was still alive. But after Hugh died and Richard, in the role of concerned friend, asked Della and Kat to see if they could help Pauline turn the struggling bed and breakfast around, Barbara had not visited Sydonia. Of course, that was when Della and Richard became more than the coupled-up, PTA and Cub-Scouting friends they had been when their children were young; maybe Richard had discouraged his wife in some way from intruding upon this good deed that he and Della were performing together.
        
"Nothing's new," Della said evenly, warming with her memories. "That's why I live out here. So life can go on undisturbed, day after day." She smiled. Richard used to tell her that her smile lit up her eyes. Even now, especially now, she knew they were her best feature.
        
Annoyance flickered across Barbara's face, then she returned the smile. "Life here agrees with you," she said. "How's Pauline? And Kat?"
        
"Out and out. But fine, of course."