Waking Up in Dixie: A Novel

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Red Hat Club comes a hilarious story of marriage and love and second chances.

When Elizabeth Mooney escaped the shame of her “white trash” family to marry Howell Whittington, the crown prince of her small town, she never dreamed that thirty years later, she’d end up trapped in a loveless marriage to the cruel banker who’s foreclosing on all her friends. Then Howe has a stroke in church, and when he wakes up, he’s at the mercy of all his appetites and emotions, telling the truth with no filters. Transformed, Howe wants to be a real husband, which scares the socks off proper, repressed Elizabeth. Setting out to right past wrongs, Howe blackmails the town’s baddies into doing the right thing. The ensuing hilarious roller-coaster ride wakes up not only Elizabeth and their marriage but the whole town and its hidebound institutions. Haywood Smith’s sharp wit and keen observations about men, mothers-in-law, marriage, and small-town Southern living will having you laughing and reading long into the night.