cover image 
ALONG CAME MARY

ALONG CAME MARY

Jo-Ann Mapson, . . Simon & Schuster, $24 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-2461-1

This follow-up to Mapson's popular Bad Girl Creek introduces a new face to the spirited gang of hard-luck women running a California flower farm. Mary Madigan ("Maddy") Caringella is a rodeo performer who decides to leave her job (and her boozy singing partner and boyfriend) and travel across the country, taking part in karaoke competitions. In Oklahoma City, she hooks up with Rick Heinrich, a fiercely independent middle-aged journalist. While the two are in New Mexico, they meet Beryl Anne, an ex–-Bad Girl who's now touring the country with her guitarist beau. In various ways, Maddy and Rick's lives become entwined with the lives of the women of Bad Girl Creek, and eventually they make their way to the farm itself, encountering some rough patches in their relationship along the way. The book is told in the voices of several characters, primarily Maddy, Rick, Beryl and Phoebe, the founder of the flower farm—she is now pregnant and facing a life-threatening delivery. Mapson gives updates on other Bad Girls as well: Ness is learning to live with HIV and Nance is fighting her anorexia, even as she plans a wedding to Phoebe's brother, James, and pines for her old love. Maddy is an appealingly saucy protagonist, though her voice gradually loses its distinctiveness and blends with that of the other narrators (who tend to sound alike) as the book wears on. The story is as sentimental as its precursor, but those who enjoyed the female bonding and entrepreneurial antics of the Bad Girls will be pleased with this chatty sequel. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate. (Jan.)