In “Bet Your Bottom Dollar,” Elizabeth Polk has just come off a bad engagement. Thinking that her high-school sweetheart, Clip, is the love of her life, she blissfully agrees when he proposes, only to be shattered a short time later when he leaves her a note under her windshield wiper, written on a bag from a fast food restaurant, calling the whole thing off. The next thing she knows, he’s hanging around with one of the fastest women in town.
Work is the constant in Elizabeth’s life, and she throws herself into it like never before. She’s the store manager at the Bottom Dollar Emporium, the only dollar store in the town of Cayboo Creek, South Carolina. The owner and the other employee are her dearest friends in the world – no matter that they’re both elderly and Elizabeth is in her twenties.
When Mrs. Tobias, a wealthy resident of a nearby town and frequent customer, asks Elizabeth to show her grandson around town, Elizabeth only agrees because Mrs. Tobias is a patron. When the grandson comes in to meet Elizabeth, she’s shocked to find that he’s a practicing Buddhist, complete with the sheet over his shoulder and shaved head. He’s planning to return to a mainstream way of life, however, and he and Elizabeth become good friends as he makes the transition.
But then questions begin to arise as Elizabeth learns that her mother wasn’t really her mother, and her father wasn’t her father, and her grandmother, who raised her, wasn’t related at all. Just as one part of her life comes into focus, everything else spins out of control. And to top it off, a big chain dollar store is coming in to town, threatening to send the Bottom Dollar Emporium clean out of business.
I really enjoyed this book. There is a little bit of swearing, although nothing vulgar. The down-home flavor, the intense loyalties demonstrated, and the personalities of the characters all made this a hit, in my opinion.
(This book was published in 2004 by Simon and Schuster.)
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