One Good Mama Bone • Inscribed by Bren McClain ☆ NF Hardcover

One Good Mama Bone Inscribed by Bren McClain

University of South Carolina Press; First Edition, 2017. NF Hardcover, 280 pages. Brown quarter cloth over tan boards. Gold foil title to spine. Crisp, clean, and square. Bright, unclipped dust jacket shows mild crinkles at spine ends, corners. Inscribed by Bren McClain "for Laura Vuolo - whose spirit I adore" October 20, 2017 Pat Conroy Festival. Foreword by Mary Alice Monroe.

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"First-time novelist McClain draws on her family's history in the rural South to create a cast of deeply relatable characters, both human and animal, who readers will find themselves rooting for until the very last page."―Booklist

South Carolina, 1950s. Homemaker Sarah Creamer has been left to care for young Emerson Bridge, the product of an affair between Sarah's husband and her best friend. But beyond the deep wound of their betrayal, Sarah is daunted by the prophecy of her mother's words, seared in her memory since childhood: "You ain't got you one good mama bone in you, girl."

When Sarah finds Emerson a steer to compete at an upcoming cattle show, the young calf cries in distress on her farm. Miles away, his mother breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to find him. When Sarah finds the young steer contently nursing a large cow, her education in motherhood begins.

But Luther Dobbins is desperate to regain his championship cattle dynasty, and he will stop at nothing to win. Emboldened by her budding mama bone, Sarah is committed to victory even after she learns the winning steer's ultimate fate. Will she too stop at nothing, even if it means betraying her teacher? One Good Mama Bone explores the strengths and limitations of parental love and the ethical dilemmas of raising animals for food978-1611177466