Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen: A Novel [Paperback]

Susan Gregg Gilmore (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 9, 2009

Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.

It’s the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.

Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective–and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself–Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is Susan Gregg Gilmore’s first novel, but her voice is similar to that of Fannie Flagg. Readers of Southern stories will enjoy the poignant self-discovery journey of this lovable heroine."
—Tampa Tribune

"Gilmore tells her tale with gentle humor and genuine regard for her characters."
—Omaha World-Herald

“If I had to make a comparison, I would compare Susan Gregg Gilmore to Fannie Flagg, but Gilmore more than holds her own. This is an unusually engaging novel by a very fine writer who knows exactly what she is doing.”
—Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls

“Susan Gregg Gilmore’s debut novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, is storytelling at its best, entertaining and lively and full of surprises. Catherine Grace Cline, the endearing witty heroine, gives her domestic journey titles of Biblical proportion as she finds more than salvation along the way.”
—Jill McCorkle, author of Carolina Moon


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

SUSAN GREGG GILMORE has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307395022
• ISBN-13: 978-0307395023
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (137 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Gregg Gilmore was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1961. Her mother is a painter, and her father was the son of a revival-bred preacher, a rich storyteller, and an insurance executive whose work moved his family across the country. But every summer, he brought his four children back to their native Tennessee to fish, swim, catch lighting bugs and grow the perfect tomato.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Susan worked as a secretary for the Smithsonian Institution. And after graduating with a Master's degree from the University of Texas, she birthed three babies, whipped up cookies for bake sales, chaired community fundraisers, taught Sunday School, and somewhere along the way free-lanced for newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Then one afternoon, she decided to write a screenplay. And when she sat down at her desk, she began writing a novel.

Susan now lives once again in Nashville, Tennessee, on the same street she lived on as a young girl. And although she has tired of sweet tea, she continues to write about her beloved South.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 75 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome story of love and forgiveness July 31, 2009

By BermudaOnion VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Catherine Grace Cline was six years old, and her sister Martha Ann was four, when their mother drowned. Their daddy is the preacher at the Baptist church in their small Georgia town. When their father is busy, Gloria Jean, a neighbor and old friend of their mother's watches the girls. Catherine Grace loves Gloria Jean because she's the only person who will talk about her mother.

Catherine Grace and Martha Ann head down to the Dairy Queen every Saturday for a Dilly Bar. That's when Catherine Grace does her dreaming and planning. She longs to get out of their small town and head to Atlanta and can't understand why Eddie Franklin is content with his life - working at Dairy Queen in a small town.

When Catherine Grace causes a commotion at a church function, her father punishes her by forbidding her to go to Dairy Queen for the rest of the summer. Gloria Jean comes up with a plan to keep the girls busy and help Catherine Grace earn money for her get-away all at the same time.

After she graduates from high school and turns eighteen, Catherine Grace heads to Atlanta with her savings. She finds a job and a place to live and things are going pretty well for her when she's called home because of a family emergency. She gets some shocking news when she gets home and finds out that she may have been looking for happiness in the wrong place all along.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen is the wonderful debut novel of Susan Gregg Gilmore. (It's hard for me to believe this is her first book!) There is so much more to this book than appears on the surface. It's about love and acceptance of friends and family. It's about having a dream and having the guts to follow it. Mostly it's about forgiveness, though.

This book is full of fantastic characters, too. I just loved Catherine Grace and could relate to her restless, curious spirit. She misses her mother so much and feels guilty because she doesn't remember her as well as she thinks she should. She also feels some pressure to be perfect since she's the preacher's daughter. Gloria Jean was a wonderful, loving character who was just a little bit different. She provided so much for the girls including a strong female role model. A lot of the secondary characters were great too. I was really able to get a feel for the small Georgia town they all lived in.

I'll readily admit that I'm partial to books set in the South, but I would have loved Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen no matter where it had been set. I can't wait for Susan Gregg Gilmore's next novel.

68 of 76 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Some how this book makes everybody who reads it sentimental for his or her youth February 16, 2008

By Julie

Format:Hardcover

I knew this was one of my all-time favorite books when I couldn't put it down the first day I got it. But then the owner of a bookstore compared it to To Kill A Mockingbird -- then a radio producer mentioned the same thing to me when she finished it -- Catherine Grace (the main character) is the voice of Scout in a different time. I laughed as I read the way Susan Gregg Gilmore (author) described, people, feelings and places. Then I cried when Catherine Grace faced decisions that seem insurmountable to an 18-year-old. Somehow I was right back there with her at that age (even though that was nearly 30 years ago!). By the end I was laughing and crying. This book is an onion. You can skim it as chick-lit, if that's you're wanting out of it. You can feel it to the core of your soul if you want to take a journey back to the time just between being a child and an adult. Or, you can argue the finer points of the book as an allegory. If you do, guess what Dairy Queen is? - Heaven. For this first time author to connect so genuinely with each and every reader (the best reviews have come from male book reviewers so far), I think we've got a new author to follow.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Coming-of-Age Tale July 12, 2009

By Julie Peterson

Format:Paperback

I am a huge sucker for good Southern fiction! Even though I now live in Central, PA, I did spend the majority of my childhood living in the South; and maybe that's one of the reasons that I enjoy these types of books so much. When I read the praise for LOOKING FOR SALVATION AT THE DAIRY QUEEN by Susan Gregg Gilmore and saw that this novel was being compared to Fannie Flagg's books, I just knew I had to read it. I absolutely love some of Ms. Flagg's novels and especially her characters, and I can definitely say that LOOKING FOR SALVATION AT THE DAIRY QUEEN did not disappoint me (even given that big build-up). I treasured each and every page of this book!

I read this book in almost one sitting (which you know is hard if you are a stay-at-home mother of two.) There are just so many things that I loved about this novel, but I think what I appreciated the most were the characters -- and especially Catherine Grace. This book is really a coming-of age novel about Catherine Grace growing up in the South in the 1970s, and she is just one of those characters that you can't help but fall in love with. She was smart, sassy, stubborn and even a little vulnerable; and reading about her actions both as a child and an adult were just so much fun. I loved seeing how Catherine Grace handled the various challenges in her life, and I enjoyed seeing her mature into an amazing young woman as a result of them.

The supporting characters in this book were wonderful too from Catherine Grace's sister, father, and even the various citizens of Ringgold. I especially loved Catherine Grace's colorful neighbor Gloria Jean who provided the much-needed woman's touch in Catherine Grace's life. Not only did Gloria Jean teach her about boys, clothes, and nail polish, but she also taught her so many wonderful life lessons about acceptance and forgiveness. Her support of Catherine Grace, even when Catherine Grace wasn't always appreciative, was such a heart-warming form of kindness.

Another thing I really liked about this book were the many messages about life that Catherine Grace learned while growing up. Many of these messages seem obvious to me now, but I can remember being young like Catherine Grace and not yet being able to see the bigger picture. There were also many lessons in this story that I still haven't quite figured out, and seeing how Catherine Grace was able to forgive the people in her life that harmed her really caused me to take a step back and think. I love it when I can take messages from books and apply them to my real life!

I am so impressed that this book was Ms. Gilmore's debut novel. Ms. Gilmore has written articles for numerous newspapers as well as a weekly column on parenting in the South; however, I am very glad that she decided to apply her writing talents to a novel. I loved her writing style -- it was so real to me; and I think the characters she created are very memorable. And while this book deeply touched me, I also found myself laughing out loud at certain parts -- it was a great blend of storytelling and humor. If you think you might be interested in reading some of Ms. Gilmore's work, you should definitely check out this excerpt of the book or even her personal blog.

I highly recommend LOOKING FOR SALVATION AT THE DAIRY QUEEN! It's just a very sweet book that is guaranteed to make you smile; however, it also contains some pretty substantial and thought-provoking themes. I think this novel would make for a terrific book club selection because there is just so much to talk about; and I was very happy to see that there is a reading guide available with some very interesting questions. Some topics for discussion include parent/child relationships, sisterhood, redemption, death, religion, happiness, salvation, escapism, and especially forgiveness. Food was also a huge recurring theme throughout this novel, and I can only imagine how fun it would be to serve (and eat) some of the foods mentioned in this story like strawberry jam and dilly bars.

I do have to warn you that reading this book will make you crave ice cream and especially a dilly bar or chocolate dipped cone. I can pretty much promise that you'll want to make a trip to Dairy Queen before you are done!