A gorgeous tragicomic novel of working-class New Orleans. Zib and Wilson Bailey-Jerusha's two grown kids-think the thick cloud of cigarette smoke enveloping their mother is what probably killed their father. Certainly the toxicity of Jerusha Bailey's dark and cynical attitudes has driven her children far from home. Wilson has escaped to Chicago, married, converted to Judaism, become a professor of Organic Evolution, all of which earns his mother's scorn. She doesn't think much of her daughter either: Zib, almost forty, unmarried and directionless, has made it only as far as the Florida Panhandle, where she's the assistant manager at the local Winn-Dixie and must fight off her boss's affections.So obliviously isolated is Jerusha, only one person is left in her sights: Dustin Puglia, chubby, wise, and fearless, a ten-year-old living next door with a poisonous mother of his own. The two become attached in this hilarious story of responsibility and blame. Secondhand Smoke is a deeply universal tale of blunt truth and hard-earned redemption.
Patty Friedmann released both the young adult novel Taken Away and the e-novel Too Jewish in late 2010. She also is the author of A Little Bit Ruined, Side Effects, Secondhand Smoke, Eleanor Rushing, and Odds, all currently in print from Counterpoint, and of The Exact Image of Mother (Viking 1991) and Too Smart to Be Rich (New Chapter 1988). In 2001-2002, she was writer-in-residence at Tulane University. Patty has reviewed for Publishers Weekly, Brightleaf, Short Story, and the Times-Picayune; her short stories have appeared in Horn Gallery, Short Story, LaLit, Xavier Review, and elsewhere; and she has had essays in Oxford American, Speakeasy, and New Orleans Review. Stage productions under the direction of Carl Walker are The Accidental Jew and Lovely Rita. She was included in The Great American Writers Cookbook and Christmas Stories from Louisiana in 2003, as well as in the collections My New Orleans in 2005, Intersections in 2006,and Life in the Wake and New Orleans Noir in 2007. In 2009 Oxford American included her Secondhand Smoke with Gone With the Wind, Deliverance, and A Lesson Before Dying as one of the 30 Most Underrated Southern Books. Patty is technically married until Medicare. She reared two children, one of whom is Esme Roberson, and she has three grandchildren, one of whom is Summer Roberson. She lives in New Orleans.
