Small Town Girl by LaVyrle Spencer

From the Publisher

Eighteen years ago, young Tess McPhail left tiny Wintergreen, Missouri, for Nashville and never looked back. Now one of country music's brightest lights, "Mac" McPhail is a millionairess many times over, whose career is her life. At thirty-five, Mac has no time for marriage, children, or kinfolk - until her sisters insist she come home to help care for their widowed mother. Assuming a month in Wintergreen will be merely dreary, Mac is unprepared for what awaits her. After almost two decades of public adoration, she is suddenly a nonperson - insulted by her jealous older sister, enraged by her intractable mother, ignored by Kenny Kronek, the next-door neighbor she mercilessly taunted all through high school. A handsome divorce who dotes upon his teenage daughter, Casey, Kenny is widely respected in the community. Now he refuses to give Mac even the time of day. Once she discovers Casey is a promising country music talent, Mac assumes the role of mentor. She gradually becomes an integral part of life in Wintergreen, and the feigned indifference between Mac and Kenny turns to playful bickering, then passion. By month's end, Mac McPhail has not only grown to treasure the priceless solidarity of family and community, but also opened up her heart to love. Yet what was possible in Wintergreen appears a naive fantasy back in Nashville: Is there room for caring and commitment in the realm of superstardom - or is a woman worshipped by millions destined always to be alone?

Publishers Weekly

Make room on bestseller lists for Spencer's latest heart-warmer about unlikely romance, this time between country-western star Tess McPhail and her old schoolmate Kenny Kronek, formally "a dork of the highest magnitude," now an accountant. When her older sisters demand that she spend four weeks in Wintergreen, Mo., helping their mother recover from hip-replacement surgery, Tess blows into town with a chip on her shoulder, expecting to be treated like the star she is. But Kenny, who lives across the alley and faithfully cares for Tess's mom, isn't at all impressed. Tess scornfully dubs him St. Kenny, but she can't help adoring his daughter, Casey, a teenage tomboy with a gravelly singing voice. The girl helps Tess write a song about the difficulties of returning home, while Kenny continues to annoy with his constant good deeds-that is, until Tess at last notes that Kenny is disturbingly attractive. When it's time to return to Nashville, she realizes she loves him. Easily resolving the quandary of how a small-town mortal might fit into a superstar's life, Spencer promotes Kenny to the position of Tess's money manager. In an ending that is pure fantasy, everybody's dreams come true-including those of the phenomenally talented and lucky Casey. Light on plot, and lacking a dashing romantic hero (Kenny is nicey-niceness personified), this novel succeeds on Spencer's talent for making the inevitable entertaining. Literary Guild main selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Book. (Mar.)

Kirkus Reviews

The heroine in Spencer's (That Camden Summer, 1995, etc.) newest surefire bestseller discovers that true love and a career do mix.

Country-western superstar Tess McPhail travels back to her roots in Wintergreen, Missouri, the town where she was born. She hasn't visited it in 18 years, since she graduated from high school and set out to conquer Nashville's Music Row. Mac, as she is known to her zillions of fans, has come back home to shepherd her mother through a hip-replacement operation. But just how she is going to endure a month in this backwater is more than the elegant (but lonely) Mac can imagine. She loves her mother, but they don't get along; Momma doesn't think a girl has really succeeded in life unless she's married. And then there's the question of how she will endure that seemingly insufferable Kenny Kronek, an accountant no less, who lives across the alley and who had a big crush on her when she was a cute teenager and he was an acne-faced nerd. Little by little, of course, Tess starts to like the quiet life. She befriends Kenny's talented daughter Casey, and she falls in love with "St. Kenny," who is, it turns out, handsome, kind, responsible, and a loving help to her momma. In the end, Tess will get the best of both worlds—life as Mrs. Kronek plus a million-dollar house in Nashville, complete with maid, limos, pool, private planes, a marble bathtub, an unlimited supply of chic low-fat dinners, and a charge account at Tiffany's.

This time out, Spencer adopts the heartfelt language of country-western lyrics ("He held her hand over his hurting heart as they drank each other in"), constructing a happy land where everything is as warm and folksy and loving as a group hug.

Product Details