Fulfilling all the high expectations set by Crazy Ladies, Michael Lee West's second novel, She Flew the Coop: A Novel Concerning Life, Death, Sex, and Recipes in Limoges, Louisiana, brilliantly interweaves dark calamity with comedy to depict everyday life in small-town Louisiana in 1952. Told through the voices of its richly eccentric characters, She Flew the Coop is an entrancing picture of the gossipmongering citizens of Limoges, a generous - but censorious - place.

Underneath Limoges's picture-postcard appearance, the tragicomic game of life goes on. Vangie Nepper tends to her garden, imagining that "tulips are bridesmaids with fat faces and good posture," while her husband, Henry, chats up Dee-Dee Robichaux, counter girl at Nepper's Drugs, telling her "my marriage to Vangie is dead. I'm just waiting for the funeral." Meanwhile, the Neppers' daughter, Olive, is seduced by the charismatic Reverend T. C.

Kirby, tries to kill herself, and winds up unconscious in the hospital amid a flood of rumors. As one of the Marshall sisters says at the First United Methodist "Pack-a-Pew" party, "If there'd been Baptists in Sodom and Gomorrah, it would've been destroyed a whole lot sooner."

1. Filled with sympathy and ironic zest, She Flew the Coop is a smashing second novel by a fresh, new voice steeped in the rich literary traditions of the South.