Liz was author of a popular series novels called “The Sweet Tea Club.” It centered around a group of women who–despite the trappings of Southern femininity– were strong as granite and resilient as the earth itself.
The ladies gather weekly at one another’s porch to drink sweet tea and share their trials and triumphs. Sometimes the tea was spiked and that’s when the women relaxed and as Liz put it, “let their hair down like Spanish moss.”
Liz wrote under the nom de plume Madeline LaFête, which she considered mysterious sounding. She liked to pepper her books with bits of her own hard-won wisdom. Gems like, “You need wind chimes to discern the shape of the wind.”
More often than not, these Southern-fried pronouncements were usually uttered by Jeanette “Jaybird” Clausen. Jaybird was the tough-talking owner of local diner the Tilt-A-Whirl, named after a carnival that came through town once. She was also mayor of the fictional town of Jasmine, Louisiana.
Once, Jaybird took a drag off a menthol cigarette and said, “Sex is the biggest trick of all. I’ve seen countless unhappy couples, should never have been married, brought together by the centrifugal force of the Big Bang, as I call it.”
“I’d outlaw sex, if it wasn’t so fun,” she concluded.
–Sarah Torribio
See more flash fiction by Sarah Torribio HERE
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