Mary Liza Hartong

The debut of a dynamite new voice from the South, Love and Hot Chicken is a spicy and hilarious Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken, and two girls in love. The Chickie Shak is something of a historical landmark. Red clapboard walls, thriving wasp population, yard-toilets resplendent with sunflowers. My best friend Lee Ray and I used to come after our softball games and snag a picnic table while our mammas ordered the home team special. Truth is, most people around here order the same thing until the day somebody throws their ashes off a roller coaster at Dollywood. The line snaked around the building far as you could see, a real parade of diversity hobnobbing in the parking lot from noon until night. When PJ Spoon returns home for her beloved daddy’s funeral, she doesn’t expect to stick around. Why abandon her PhD program at Vanderbilt for the humble charms of her hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee? She tells herself it’s to help her brokenhearted Mamma, but PJ’s own heart’s not doing too good either. She impulsively takes a job as a fry cook at Pennywhistle’s beloved Chickie Shak, where locals gather for Nashville-style hot chicken. Then fate shakes up PJ’s life again. While the town rallies around the terribly retro and terribly fun Hot Chicken Pageant, PJ finally notices her cute redheaded coworker Boof, a singer-songwriter with a talent as striking as her curly hair. While PJ and Boof fall for each other, Boof’s search for her birth mother—a Pennywhistle native—catapults the budding couple into a mystery that might be better left unsolved. When the Chickie Shak pageant takes off, old rivalries and new friendships in Pennywhistle lead to unexpected fireworks, and new beginnings.