Shop Side

by Keith Kelly

Capturing the dilemmas of gender, relationship, and contemporary life, Shop Side will absorb you immediately in its world. Frantically struggling in a web of stagnation and quirky friendships, Kaley Anderson is on a journey to find peace in her mundane life. Kaley realizes she does not travel this avenue alone. What unfolds on this mission is a series of invaluable lessons that make her life meaningful. Since she was a little girl, she has wanted to be a musician or a writer, but isn't motivated to see these dreams through to completion. The novel is set in West Memphis, Arkansas and centers on Kaley's business, a grocery store on one side and a bagel shop on the other. She feels trapped in what she refers to as her career of doom. Kaley's ongoing search for peace introduces her to a quirky and unbelievable cast of friends. She discovers that Roscoe, her husband, wants to be a woman and later after their divorce transforms himself into Rozie Redd Skye. Mary, whom is Kaley's best friend, suffers from Acrotomophelia and is on a life path of strangeness. David is a young man in search of answers that only Kaley can help him to answer. He struggles with his own demons and conflicts to resolve and through a journey of mazes, searches for Kaley in an unrelenting journey for truth. Shady Ray, Kaley's longtime customer is a storyteller and has difficulty sorting truth from fiction. This is an unbelievable story that unravels in a friendly little store called Shop Side.

234 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 2015