book review: looking for salvation at the dairy queen

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen - Susan Gregg Gilmore


It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.

Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, she immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home. As a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective–and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself–Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.
*description from Amazon* (because I read it more than a week ago, and I wanted to be sure it was accurate)

I loved this book. It was a quick, easy read. It may not have been the most original story in the world. I mean, let's face it, there are hundreds (thousands?) of books about girls growing up in a small town in the south and trying to escape to a big city. It was also fairly predictable. Some surprises were easier to figure out than others, but it didn't make me like the book any less. This was Susan Gregg Gilmore's first book. I saw on Amazon that she has at least one other one out, and I'm definitely going to check it out.