The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around-fast. If the preacher's wife's petticoat shows, the ladies will make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things take a scandalous turn. That is the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, elopes with Miss Love Simpson-a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee! On that day, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy's adventures begin and an unimpeachably pious, deliciously irreverent town comes to life.

Olive Ann Burns's classic best-seller brings to vivid life an era that will never exist again, exploring timeless issues of love, death, coming-of-age, and the ties that bind families and generations.