Growing Up Delicious

man. Her mother’s pitiless devotion to scripture and abject worship of Delicious’s rabid preacher. Her father’s death-by-alcohol. Her own attempt to drown her sweetheart’s father—the preacher—in the baptismal font.
Away from the poisonous fruits of her birthplace, Jennifer finds peace, a good woman and, for decades, a happy life. Until the phone call.


Now Jennifer is on her way back to Delicious where her old foes wait for her save one: her mother. Hard enough to confront her mother’s inexplicable suicide, but there’s also her sister’s rampant heterosexuality, the preacher’s unmitigated hatred and a town that has more reason than ever to look down on the Andersen name.


Jennifer, and Delicious, may have the final word at an unforgettable funeral as full of surprises as Delicious is full of secrets.


In a debut novel full of sharp observation and kind wit, Marianne Banks tells the story of a small town survivor in one of the most inventive and insightful novels of the year.