MISS JULIA ROCKS THE CRADLE

Steel magnolias kick butt.

It’s a dark and snowy night. The power is out and cars are stranded. Hazel Marie isn’t due for two more weeks, but her twins decide they’re ready right now. So Miss Julia (Miss Julia Renews Her Vows, 2010, etc.), Lillian and Etta Mae deliver them while the menfolk—Mr. Pickens, the daddy, and Sam, Miss Julia’s second husband—are off in Raleigh on business. They return to Abbotsville to colic and chaos. A body has been found in the schoolteacher Miss Petty’s tool shed, and Miss Julia is overdrawn at the bank because someone’s forged her name on stolen checks. Thurlow Jones, whose backyard abuts Miss Petty’s, insinuates that she often had gentlemen callers late at night. Was one of them Richard Stroud, the deceased, just recently paroled after financial shenanigans that cost Miss Julia $100,000? To find out, elderly, hyper-inquisitive Miss Julia reconnoiters the tool shed in the wee hours, drives Sam from their home by not confiding in him and sets tongues wagging about their relationship. The babies cry. The babies need changing. The babies settle down with pacifiers. Through it all, Miss Julia befriends Pastor Poppy, the new assistant pastor, who convinces Thurlow that women have a place in the ministry. 

Sanctimonious and then some, with much quoting of Scripture and gossip from the neighbors.