Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

Overview

Sugar Land is a southern fried novel about love, Lead Belly, and liberation. According to a starred Kirkus Review, Sugar Land "is a postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades. The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown… [a] ravishing debut.”

It’s 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend―who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Lead Belly, who sings his way out (true story)―but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful novel about the heart’s refusal to be denied what the heart wants.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597096270
Publisher:	Red Hen Press
Publication date:	10/23/2018
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	704,261
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

tammy lynne stoner’s work has been selected for more than a dozen anthologies and literary journals. She was nominated for a Million Writers Award and earned her MFA from Antioch University. Stemming from what her grandmother calls her “gypsy blood,” tammy has lived in 15 cities, working as a biscuit maker, a medical experimentee, a forklift operator, a gas station attendant, and a college instructor, among other odd jobs. She is the creator of Dottie’s Magic Pockets and the publisher of Gertrude Press, based in in Portland, OR, where she lives with her lady-friend, Karena, and their three kids.

Interviews

https://www.hastybooklist.com/home/author-interview-tammy-lynne-stoner

Editorial Reviews

Audio recording of an excerpt from Sugar Land on The Other Stories

Review in Dallas Voice

s://www.hastybooklist.com/home/author-interview-tammy-lynne-stoner" target="_blank" rel="noopener"Hasty Booklist Interview with tammy lynne stoner

Featured in Deep South Magazine's Fall/Winter 2018 Reading List.

From the Publisher

"Once you start reading, you will not be able to stop nor will you want to." &mdash Amos Lassen Reviews

Amos Lassen

11/15/2018

DEBUT In 1923 Texas, 19-year-old Dana and Rhodie's burgeoning romance doesn't stand a chance. After Dana overhears her cousin, Sheriff Earl, boasting about beating lesbians and running them out of his jurisdiction, she leaves Rhodie and takes a job as a cook at the state prison in Sugar Land, TX. There, she ignores Rhodie's letters from college, befriends inmate blues musician Leadbelly, endures sexual harassment from the sadistic head chef, and eventually marries the widowed prison warden. After he passes away, "Nana Dana" remains close to her two stepdaughters, moves into a cat-filled trailer home, and enters the 1950s assuming that she will be lonely for the rest of her life. Tanya May Rogerton, a local dressmaker (and widow) may be able to change Dana's solo destiny if Dana can just let it happen and enjoy herself. Racism, sexism, and homophobia have an impact on all of the characters, and Nana Dana is resilient and relatable and doesn't always follow the path readers might want. VERDICT In this engaging and authentic tale of one woman's life and loves, debut novelist Stoner follows in the bright legacy of Southern humorists such as Fannie Flagg, Rita Mae Brown, Bailey White, and Rebecca Wells.—Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Library Journal

★ 2018-07-31

The long, wondrous life of a mostly closeted Texas lesbian, from teenage years in the kitchen at the men's prison to old age in a trailer off RR 23, with the 20th century rolling by in the background.

"My first workday at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men was February 8, 1923." When we meet Miss Dara, she has traveled from her home in West Texas all the way to a prison on the outskirts of a steamy, smelly little town called Sugar Land, near Houston. She is hoping to escape the fallout of her passionate love affair with a girl named Rhodie who comes in to buy eggs at the egg store where Dara works—"how could I not love a girl with a butterfly scarf and a bow with no arrows?" At the prison, Dara meets several characters who will greatly influence her life: the horrible and predatory head cook; a mustachioed co-worker named Beauregard; the Warden, a decent man who will play an unexpectedly large role in Dara's future; and a talented if violent prisoner named Huddie. Huddie Ledbetter turns out to be the real-life musician Lead Belly, who actually was pardoned by the governor for his singing. From these beginnings, the story takes many delightful twists and turns, always described succinctly and colorfully by this narrator, who is irresistible even on days when she's "retaining enough water to grow rice in Arizona." By the end of it, she comes to believe "that each and every life has the number of trials it is destined to have, and if you take one away, another one fills its place….No life is easy and no life is hard; it's just what adjectives you choose to use to describe it." Dara's story is a postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades.

The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown, Stoner is sure to win her own devoted following with this ravishing debut.

Kirkus Reviews