I was reading Baldacci's novels as they came out, every one, for some years, until I finally kind of OD'd on them and now haven't read any of them for the past 15 years or so. But I've been wanting to re-read this one because it is my favorite one of all of his that I've read. The central character is LuAnn Tyler, a dirt-poor young high school dropout who lives in a trailer in north Georgia with an eight-month-old baby and an abusive boyfriend who stays either drunk or hung over all the time. She waits tables in a country diner, no hope and no future. Until a stranger approaches her with an offer that is both too good to be true and difficult to turn down. If you like novels with strong female characters, you'll love LuAnn Tyler. At first glance she seems like your basic stereotypical "trailer trash" but she turns out to be a diamond in the rough, remarkably bright, principled and resourceful.
Coincidentally, the waitress who just waited on me at Cracker Barrel saw me reading it and said she's reading the same novel. Weird coincidences do happen sometimes in the real world, and that one's pretty weird, two people randomly thrown together who are currently reading the same 25-year-old novel.
-- Ron
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