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The Honk and Holler Opening Soon
Billie Letts
Grand Central Publishing
May 1999
On Sale: May 1, 1999
320 pages ISBN: 0446675059 EAN: 9780446675055 Paperback
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Fiction
The neon sign had seemed appropriate when the Honk and
Holler Opening Soon was being built. But twelve years later,
the once-busy highway outside Sequoyah, Oklahoma, is
little-traveled, and "opening soon" is a tired joke. Today
the sign is as battered and beaten as the cafe and its
owner, Caney Paxton, a Vietnam War veteran who hasn't
ventured outside since its opening. The characters who drift
in and out of the Honk don't change much: Molly O, a
four-times married earth mother who recognizes a wounded
spirit when she meets one; Life Halstead, a widower who eats
three meals a day in the cafe so he can be near Molly O;
Hooks Red Eagle, Soldier Starr, and Quinton Roach, Cherokee
veterans of World War II; and Bilbo and Peg Porter--Bilbo
steadily puffing his smokes while Peg struggles for breath
through her oxygen mask. With Christmas only days away,
their lives are to be forever changed with the arrival of
Vena Takes Horse, a Crow woman on a quest, and Bui Khanh, a
Vietnamese refugee looking for home. A story that crackles
and sizzles like burgers on a red-hot grill, The Honk and
Holler Opening Soon captures a small town's prejudice and
tolerance, violence and big-heartedness. It convinces us
that dark clouds can really have silver linings. And it
leaves us hungry for more writing from Billie Letts and the
Oklahoma she portrays with so much vitality and love.
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