01919cam a2200301 i 4500 1226372866 TxAuBib 20240409120000.0 170203s2017||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2016057907 9780399562099 0399562095 (OCoLC)952384287 TxAuBib rda Hepinstall, Kathy, author. The Book of Polly / Kathy Hepinstall. New York, New York : Pamela Dorman Books, [2017] ©2017. 322 pages ; 23 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier "Willow Havens is ten years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to shoot varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors--and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young, modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late fifties when Willow was born, so Willow knows she's here by accident, a late-life afterthought. Willow's father died before she was born, her much older brother and sister are long grown and gone and failing elsewhere: it's just her and bigger-than-life Polly. Willow is desperately hungry for clues to the family life that preceded her, and especially Polly's life pre-Willow. Why did she leave her hometown of Bethel, Louisiana, fifty years ago and vow never to return? Who is Garland Jones, her long-ago suitor who possibly killed a man? And will Polly be able to outrun The Bear, the illness that finally puts her on a collision course with her past?"-- Provided by publisher. 20240409. Mothers and daughters Fiction. Dysfunctional families Fiction. Family secrets Fiction.