Jolene Harris grew up knowing the real hair color of every woman in town. The daughter of beautician Rhoda Harris, she was raised on a hearty diet of gossip, hearsay, and hairspray. Working side-by-side in Rhoda’s double-wide salon, the two women often know more about the daily news of Bayou La Batre, AL than the preacher, the priest, and the paper combined.
Set in a bustling little town just about as far South as you can go without getting your feet wet, every day brings a different set of friends, clients, and complications to untangle. There’s Thuy, the esthetician/nursing student as devoted to her school books as her Bible and her frenemy Nancy, a single mom with a worse reputation in town than hurricane season. There’s Sam, a local good ol’ boy and Rhoda’s devoted beau, and Keith, the town bad boy and Jolene’s sketchy boyfriend. Joining them are shop regulars like scandalmongers Niecey and Valerie, shrinking techno-violet librarian Carrie Anne, ever-surprising retiree Gloria, and a calendar full of surprising drop-ins.
The series makes 13 monthly visits to the Homestyle Salon and Spa to catch up on the latest. New issues are available on or around the first of each month, beginning May 2017. As Rhoda says, “miss a day and you miss a lot.” If you’re a late-comer to the series, it is best read in chronological order.
Issue #4: Jolene Gets Engaged Jolene debuts her engagement ring to varying receptions. Later, she and Thuy learn that true compatibility isn’t always pretty.
Michele Feltman Strider stumbled into writing in an effort to monetize the time she spent talking to her imaginary friends.
After publishing her first book, Homecoming, Michele realized that being a novelist not only exempted her from real work but gave her the opportunity to write third-person biographies about herself.
Since then, she has written Hometown, Homeless, and Homestyle, because titles are hard, y’all.