Mindy Friddle

In Sans Souci, South Carolina, talk is cheap, real estate even more so. No one knows this better than Cutter Johanson, a gruff tomboy who waits tables, writes obits, and makes every effort, however comical and in the face of her mercenary relatives, to avert the sale of the dilapidated ancestral home. And despite her plucky resolve, all appears to be lost--until she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth, a shy and fragile academic who puts both their fates on a permanent mend.

""Mindy Friddle has a great comic touch, and her novel is a touching, heartfelt debut."" --Richard Russo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

""Cutter Johanson is a heroine Eudora Welty would be proud to claim and one few readers will forget. The Garden Angel is a book I did not want to end."" --Ron Rash, author of Saints at the River

""Friddle has a way with the comic yet apt image...funny, down-to-earth, and steeped in a sense of place."" --The Washington Post

""A beguiling debut novel. Friddle...handles the juxtaposition of two highly eccentric cultures--small-town Southern society and small-college English department--with a light, quirky touch that keeps the story moving along and steadily entertaining."" --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution