Michele Vanort Cozzens

It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club Michele Vanort Cozzens

2006 award winning author of "A Line Between Friends" and rising fiction star Michele Cozzens now brings us "It's Not Your Mother's Bridge Club", the character-driven story of eight women who are middle-aged, middle to upper-middle class, and in the middle of each other's lives. They live in a fictional town in southern Arizona called the Rattlesnake Valley, which is a "picturesque desert dale surrounded by craggy, saguaro-studded mountains." Each month they gather, forming the Snake Eyes Dice Club. They play the dice game known as bunko. It's an eventful year. Friendships are tested and strengthened. True characters are revealed through both light-hearted moments and grave, dark moments as well. The women of The Snake Eyes Dice Club while changed, are renewed with the start of another year together. The women: Shonah Barlett is a soccer mom and newspaper columnist who begins each chapter with a snippet from her column "The Dice Club Chronicles." Brandy Lynn is a conservative cowgirl physical therapist, who has a foul mouth and five kids. Sylvia Ostrander is a wealthy philanthropist and botox junkie. Tootsie Fennimore is a retired LPGA golfer who is reproductively challenged. Blanca Midnight Fernglen is a beautiful mixed-race divorcee, making ends meet by modeling and selling her paintings. Chloe Forrest is a Canadian import who is a schedule-spewer and has financial difficulties keeping up with her upper-middle class neighbors. Amanda Prince is a resentful employee of Sylvia Ostrander's high-powered attorney husband, grieving over the loss of her only child. Tara Shephard is a former beauty queen and commercial artist, who is a raging alcoholic. Each character plays an integral role as they face ordinary and extraordinary circumstances, and are forced to come together as a group to support one another. You've heard of Steel Magnolias? This is more like Steel Tumbleweeds. The American women who belong to bunko groups, bridge clubs, book clubs and dice clubs will find this both funny and tragic, and highly relatable.