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Synopsis
From the acclaimed author of The Girlfriends Club a deeply affecting novel that tests the bonds of friendship against the long-buried pangs of first love Rhonda, Gina Kay, and Holly were the best of friends in their small-town Texas high school until the day Gina Kay ran off and married Rhonda's boyfriend, Terry Robertson. Now, twenty-five years later, news of Terry's sudden death has reunited them, and brought to the surface old bonds and betrayals they thought they'd left behind.
The three old friends share a trip to New York City, where Gina Kay promises to finally reveal why and how she stole the love of Rhonda's life and ruined a friendship that was supposed to last forever. Over the course of that tumultuous trip, the women find themselves reconsidering their lives, the choices they made, the men they married, and all the paths not taken. As girls, they were stifled by their parents' expectations, small-town life, and the inevitability of biology. How many of their dreams did they actually pursue, and how many have they relinquished? If Rhonda had married Terry instead, would all of their lives have turned out differently?
A Good Man is a novel about good friends, first loves, shocking disloyalty, long-held secrets, and that ever-present question -- what if?
Kirkus Reviews
Three high-school chums torment each other with a trip to Manhattan before coming clean about a long-festering secret. Rhonda, Holly and Gina Kay were the three teen musketeers of the small Texas town of Lamberton. Rhonda, the brain of the group, went on to college and a successful legal career after being forcibly separated from her obsession, high-school boyfriend Terry Robertson. Holly had dreams of fashion fame but has settled for a bustling wedding-gown business in Waco. Gina Kay grew up dirt poor in a manufactured home with loving parents. (Her mother, grossly overweight and in need of constant care, was unable to leave her house.) With Holly and Rhonda's support, Gina Kay won the Miss American Teenager beauty pageant title-and scholarship. In college, Rhonda started seeing Terry again surreptitiously, even after he tried to kill her by ramming his convertible into a tree. Although he's heir to a ranching fortune, his dark past and forbidding father have nourished a mean and self-destructive streak. Rhonda and Gina Kay have been estranged since Gina Kay dropped out of college suddenly and eloped with Terry. Cut to the present, when the last of Terry's many vehicular suicide attempts has succeeded, and the trio gathers at Gina Kay's ranch after his funeral. There, a pageant event the pretext, the three, in their 40s now, decide to take a Manhattan reunion-and-reconciliation trip. The women befriend their New York City driver, Russian immigrant G.W., ultimately planning a wedding for his daughter in Brighton Beach. Suspense is of the flashback-fueled, wait-and-hurry-up variety, and narrative padding postpones Rhonda's disappointing assignation with a would-be lover. Worse, Gina Kayrefuses to explicate the Terry situation until trip's end. Along the way, there are large chunks of Manhattan logistics and less-than-convincing apologias for good but dull husbands before getting to the genuinely intriguing questions: What really happened between Gina Kay and Terry, and can Rhonda ever get it out of her system? A morbidly obese novella.