Billy Beede, the teenage daughter of the fast-running, no-account, and six-years-dead Willa Mae, comes home one day to find a fateful letter waiting for her: Willa MaeĀ?s burial spot in LaJunta, Arizona, is about to be plowed up to make way for a supermarket.

As Willa MaeĀ?s only daughter, Billy is heiress to her motherĀ?s substantial but unconfirmed fortuneĀ?a cache of jewels that Willa MaeĀ?s lover, Dill Smiles, is said to have buried with her. Dirt poor, living in a trailer with her Aunt June and Uncle Roosevelt behind a gas station in a tumbleweedy Texas town, and pregnant with an illegitimate child, Billy knows that treasure could mean salvation. So she steals DillĀ?s pickup truck and, with her aunt and uncle in tow, heads for Arizona with Dill in hot pursuit. While everyone agrees itĀ?s only polite to speak of getting motherĀ?s body and moving her to a proper resting place, itĀ?s well understood that digging up Willa MaeĀ?s diamonds and pearls will make the whole trip a lot more worthwhile.

The enormously accomplished fiction debut from Suzan-Lori Parks, the 2002 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Getting MotherĀ?s Body takes its place in the company of the classic works of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. But when it comes to an ingenious, uproarious knack for depicting the trifling, hard-luck, down-and-out souls who need a little singing and laughing and lying and praying to get through the day, Suzan-Lori Parks shares the stage with no one.

Buy Getting Mother's Body : A Novel by Suzan-Lori Parks at Attic books in Nairobi Kenya.

Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages257 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN101400060222
• ISBN139781400060221