Waitress of the Month
From her new home on Willow Farm Circle, an affluent neighborhood in Toledo, thirteen-year-old Polly spends her time coordinating outfits with her best friend, shopping and voting on which neighborhood mother is “best dressed,” has the “best hair,” and serves the “best afternoon snack,” (Polly’s mother always wins). All this changes when Polly’s father leaves and files for divorce. Polly’s mother, who has never had any other job, finds work as a waitress, and must move her family back to the house they’d “moved up” from. Although Polly loses her house, her friends, and (most wrenchingly) her ability to see the world as a simple and orderly place, she gains a deeper understanding of her parents’ relationship, and what it means to be a mother.

Told in Polly’s voice, which swings from catty and wry to emotionally taut, Waitress of the Month shows us how crisis can lead to insight and intimacy.

> Read the first chapter

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Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs
Paris Smells Like Rotten Eggs is the story of Polly Meanwell’s one day manic mid-life crisis journey through the streets of Paris. While her husband and children sleep off jet-lag in the hotel room, Polly sets out to find a bakery lauded in the Irreverent Guide to Paris to buy croissants for the family. But panicked by a lump she found in her breast and fueled by a homeless woman's admonition, Be Where You Are, she has an urgent desire to live the life she meant to live—in a day.

Every other chapter is a pivotal moment back in time examining the ambivalent feelings that plague women—in love, in marriage, in work, in motherhood—while also touching on a haunting memory from Polly's past, her still unresolved relationship with her parents and her chronic sense of rootlessness in the world.

> Read the first chapter

> Read the excerpt in the August issue of Literary Mama