""Me, I need a map to tell which town I'm in. I feel like ten miles of bad road, wondering how I got to where I am. . . ." After finally wising up to her drunken rodeo-crooner lover ("Imagine Kevin Costner with an overbite"), Mary Madigan saddles up her twin Border collies and takes her act on the road, leaving miles of heartache and highway behind.
Maddy's journey takes her across the South - singing in and winning one karaoke contest after another - and inexorably closer to a dreaded showdown with her past.".
"In Oklahoma City, she meets Rick, a journalist haunted by his own ghosts. After he loses his job, he travels to his childhood home to set up camp. When he first runs into Maddy, she gives him the cold shoulder. But he's charming, and persistent, and before Maddy knows it she's got a travel companion and a new lover (with an all-too-familiar set of tricks).
Their travels will ultimately bring them to Bad Girl Creek, where the ladies know him as "Rotten Rick" - because he broke Nance's heart - and where the waters have already been troubled." "Phoebe's pregnancy is life-threatening, Nance's breakup diet has turned dangerously successful, Beryl is still struggling to adjust to life after prison, and HIV-positive Ness is distancing herself from the "healthy" world - if you can call it that."--BOOK JACKET.
Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of eight books of mainstream fiction as well as many freelance articles, national book reviews, and has been included in several anthologies . Blue Rodeo was made into a CBS television movie starring Kris Kristofferson and Ann-Margret. Hank & Chloe, The Wilder Sisters, and Bad Girl Creek, were national bestsellers. Bad Girl Creek was a 2002 Booksense 76 pick, as well as an alternate selection for Doubleday, Literary Guild, and Book of the Month Clubs. It was also released in large print and unabridged audio for Chivers. Currently at work on a new novel, Mapson authors a monthly column on the writing life for Art Matters and teaches fiction in the MFA Program in Writing at UAA. Her former students include: mystery writer Earlene Fowler (the Benni Harper series), and mainstream writers Judi Hendricks ( Bread Alone -a Booksense 76 pick), and Joyce Weatherford ( The Heart of the Beast ). She lives and writes in Anchorage with her husband and five dogs.
