Nora, Nora

Twelve-year-old Peyton McKenzie isn't ready to share her widowed father with anyone—certainly not with her cigarette-smoking redheaded cousin Nora, who just rolled into sleepy Lytton, Georgia, this summer behind the wheel of a pink Thunderbird. But her father seems to like Nora, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which means she can't be all bad. And when Nora takes a job teaching the first integrated honors class at the local high school, it appears she might be staying forever.

But there's something troubling Peyton's unorthodox cousin, something more than the outspoken town gossips' complaints about Nora's "unsouthern ways." When the truth comes to light, it will rock the segregated small community—and teach Peyton an unforgettable lesson about the enormous cost of love.

It is summer, 1961, and Lila Lee Bayliss, motherless since birth and now 13, doesn't quite know what to make of Nora Findlay. Nora smokes, swears, wears short shorts, and when she listens, she looks at you as if she's never heard a human voice before. She also laughs a lot, something that's been missing for a long time in the Bayliss household, and she seems to have done just about everything fun there is to do in the world. Soon, even Lila's somber father is humming while he shaves. When Nora takes a teaching job at the local high school, it seems like she might stay on in Lytton forever, despite her outlandish ways and the snide comments made about her by some of the neighbors. As time foes on, Lila begins to realize that underneath Nora's high-spirited, feisty façade, something is troubling her, something from her past. And though Nora has tried to run away from the life she had before, a secret follows her, on that is so shocking, it will stun the residents of this small, segregated town and forever change the life of young Lila. The mesmerizing story of an independent woman caught in a provincial place and time, Nora, Nora is destined to become Anne Rivers Siddons's biggest hit yet

Atlanta Journal Constitution

A skillful storyteller...Siddons does what she does best and delivers kings-sized conflict in hypnotic surroundings.

Anne Rivers Siddons' books are firmly rooted in the culture of the modern South, but ultimately fans love her books because they portray -- with compassion and truth -- women who transcend the difficulties of love, friendship and growing up.