From the Publisher
Set in a small town of Montcrief, Arkansas about twenty years ago, Miss Etta's Arkansas Spring is a quiet, strong novel about a quiet, frail woman. Fayetta Armstrong, know to her neighbors and pupils as Miss Etta, is a piano teacher who lives alone and has very little social life other than her pupils and her next-door neighbor, Mabel. Miss Etta is an old-fashioned widow on the far side of middle age. She is kind and polite, and her pupils and neighbors respect her; but nobody really knows her, and nobody realizes the loneliness she feels or the phobias that cripple her. Orphaned in her childhood by a tornado that killed her parents, she has felt deserted throughout her life, a pattern that was reinforced by her husband's accidental death and her daughter's moving away to get married. She is a small woman in a small town, lost in the past and afraid of the weather.
Onto this scene walks a breath of fresh air in the form of Mr. Riddick, a handsome young musician who has come to town to judge the Guild Auditions for the piano students of the town of Montcrief. He's a natural charmer, and he brings with him a sophistication that Miss Etta and her neighbors haven't seen lately.
He brings out the best in some, the worst in others. He judges fairly--but really fairly, meaning, for example, that he's not susceptible to the flirtatious charms of Jonell, the rich teenage trollop who tries to seduce him, either for the excitement or to influence his decision, or both. Mr. Riddick spends several days in Montcrief, during which he's the center of everyone's attention, especially Miss Etta's.
Miss Etta and Mr. Riddick relate to each other very closely, and he helps her overcome her feelings of insecurity about the worth of what she's doing. When finally he leaves town, she must necessarily feel a bit deserted, but all the richer for his visit.
And then the weather strikes again. It's spring in the Ozarks, and that means the tornadoes that so terrify Miss Etta. She is in fact nearly destroyed by the storm at the end of the book, but her neighbors rescue her--not so much from the wind as from her hysterical reaction to it. This catharsis brings Miss Etta back to life, and the combination of the two visitations--from Mr. Riddick and from the tornado--leaves her a stronger woman, ready to go on with greater purpose.
