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Home > Books > Throwing Roses |
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Following a serious automobile accident, 17-year-old Branda Raggan awakens in the hospital a stranger within her own skin. Therapy for her injuries has little effect, so the doctors send her home with her mother, Margaret, a hard-drinking, tough-talking former country-and-western singer who runs the local tavern, The Bloody Mary, above which she and Branda make their home.
After Branda is unable to adjust to her old way of life during the heat of a Milwaukee midsummer, her mother sends her on a package tour to London especially designed for people with "special needs." Branda flees the group soon after arrival and is rescued by Lady Sabrina, a six-foot-five-inch tall transvestite nightclub performer and part-time puppeteer who provides Branda with a warm bed, clean towels, endless cups of jasmine tea, and just enough encouragement to get her life back on track.
From its opening declaration of, "It was my grandmother who told me that Jesus lived on my shoulder… and I would try to spy Him from the corner of my eye. At night I searched my collars for His footprints and shook out my sweaters to loosen the dust rubbed off from His robe," the reader is spellbound as Branda pleads her case before a seemingly impassive God.
Throwing Roses never minces words as it dares to ponder the nature of mercy and seeks to uncover the redemptive powers of hope, faith, and unorthodox love.
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