Customer Reviews

Live Armadillos

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This is the story of Dana Elliot, a successful executive who didn’t feel the need to be nice to anybody who couldn’t advance her up the social or business ladder. Nose permanently in the air, she didn’t smell a rat until her trophy toy-boy husband ran off with his secretary to parts unknown, but not before systematically cleaning Dana out financially.

Faced with bankruptcy, Dana gets another rude awakening when she realizes that she’s not the hot shot financial whiz that she ought to be, given her job in the Budget department, and that she has no one to fall back on, or to confide in, about her problems.

Still trying to maintain her aloof façade while facing eviction and mounting bills, she reluctantly clutches at her last straw, an offer from an almost complete stranger, a co-worker named Helen, who had extended an invitation to her home. Helen herself is not quite sure why she made the offer, but is very surprised when Dana accepts and moves to the tiny town of Bradbury with its largely geriatric neighborhood.

Obviously this calls for some soul searching and difficult adjustments for both women, both of whom are reluctant to give up their past shadows, but gradually they come to an understanding. As life would have it, the small town has a secret or two of its own, and just when the dust seems to have settled, the developers move in with plans to flatten their little community to pave the way for progress.

This is a well told tale, richly descriptive of human character and life in a small closely knit neighborhood, but tends to ramble in places, coming to a rather abrupt ending with everything falling into place a little too conveniently. Entertaining, and easy to read, but needing a little editing.




Amanda Richards, November 29, 2005

Ambitious, heartless hospital executive Dana Elliot (think Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada) is shafted by her much younger husband and left broke and alone with an empty bank account and no way to pay the rent on her expensive condo. Helen Weaver, the hospital Coordinator of Volunteer Services, comes to Dana's rescue and offers to share her home while Dana gets back on her feet. Not only do these two very different women struggle to understand each other but, as their lives become more entwined, they also struggle to understand the choices they have made and to reconsider what they really want out of life.

When Helen's neighborhood is slated to be seized by eminent domain for the benefit of the medical group that owns the hospital where they both work, Dana is assigned the job of representing the developers in the PR campaign. Dana must either work for the destruction of the neighborhood that she has come to call home or put her career in jeopardy.

Not only was I rooting for Dana and Helen and their endangered neighborhood, but I began to reflect upon the price we pay for success in the workplace, even those of us who are not corporate climbers.

The demand of keeping up with demanding workloads, long commutes, and transient neighborhoods has changed how we interact - and the time we have to interact - with our families, our neighbors, and our fellow workers. Live Armadillos is an entertaining novel that questions the high cost in quality of life that is often the price of "success" today.

Deanne Devine captures your imagination and your heart in this coming of age novel that all professional young women should read. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her work in print, and perhaps on the large screen.