Viola Shipman | Famous in a Small Town

Join us in partnership with Coveyou Scenic Farm Market, Wednesday, June 21st at 5:30pm for an evening with Viola Shipman for the release of Famous in a Small Town, set in Good Hart, Michigan!

Tickets are required for this event. Each ticket includes a paperback copy of Famous in a Small Town. Your online or in-store purchase of a ticket is your RSVP, but space is limited for this event and seats are on a first-come, first serve basis. Buy your ticket below! Please email us directly or call the store for more information: books@mcleanandeakin.com, 213-347-1180.

If you are attending the Elk Rapids event, please select pick up in store when checking out and we will hand deliver your Viola books!
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About the Book: Mary Jackson has always been a bit of a rule breaker. In 1958, at the age of 15, Mary was crowned the 35th Annual Cherry Pit Spittin’ Champion of Good Hart, Michigan, establishing a distance that has remained a record for sixty-five years. Cherry Mary was born, and she has lived her whole life in Good Hart, now running the Very Cherry General Store--part post office, sandwich shop and tiny grocery--that she took over from her mother and grandmother.
By contrast, Becky Thatcher, an assistant elementary school principal in St. Louis, Missouri, has always played it safe, right down to her longtime boyfriend. But when she thinks he’s going to ask her to marry him on the last day of school and doesn’t, she has a playground meltdown to rival those of the children she teaches.
Becky vows to be more adventurous and sets out on a girls’ trip with her childhood best friend for a bit of fun, and to heal in the resort town of Good Hart – set along the wondrous Tunnel of Trees in northern Michigan – the area she used to summer with her grandparents. After one too many glasses of Chardonnay, she enters the 100th Annual Cherry Pit Spitting Championship, which the locals take very seriously. Not only does she win, but her pit flies a distance that beats Cherry Mary's long-standing record.
Becky thinks it’s all fun and games. Mary believes it’s destiny. As girls – decades apart – the two saw the same vision of four women walking on the horizon of Lake Michigan, a Michigan mirage known as “Fata Morgana.” But were the two – who have been long hurt by the men in their lives – meant to meet? Following her promise to take more risks, Becky works under Cherry Mary’s wing for the summer, hearing her life story about how she became the first woman to win the contest and eventually run the store, while also working to fit into a small town that doesn’t trust her, and working alongside the widow’s grandson, a younger man who she beat in the contest and is angry he is being overlooked by his grandmother to run the store...but just might be the reason this was all meant to be.
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About the Author: Viola Shipman is the pen name for Wade Rouse, a popular, award-winning memoirist. Rouse chose his grandmother's name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his writing. Rouse is the author of the USA TODAY bestsellers The Clover Girls, The Secret of Snow, and The Summer Cottage, as well as The Charm Bracelet, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and became an international bestseller. He divides his time between Saugatuck, Michigan and Palm Springs, California, and has written for People, Coastal Living, Good Housekeeping, and Taste of Home, along with other publications, and is a contributor to All Things Considered.