LIBERATING PARIS

The TV writer and producer, not to mention famous F.O.B. (Friend of Bill), debuts with the chronicle of one eventful year in a small town where a few high-school friends are still close.

Like an overfurnished room, Bloodworth-Thomason’s story is stuffed with colorful characters who (not surprisingly) all talk and behave like actors in a TV show. The small group of friends live in Paris, Arkansas, where a big superstore has been built out on the highway, so that everyone is shopping out there instead of patronizing the old Main Street businesses. This megastore and a group of prejudiced rednecks are the villains in an essentially sentimental tale that’s book-ended by a death and a wedding. When Dr. Mac dies, fortysomething Wood Mackelmore, his son and a physician, feels even more down about his own life. His marriage to Milan seems as dull as his job, and he’s feeling restless. His friends Mavis, Jeter, and Brundidge also have their issues. Mavis is single and owns a successful bakery, but she wants a baby. Jeter, who is confined to a wheelchair thanks to a football injury, writes poetry and dreams of love. And Brundidge—divorced, lonely, and determined to preserve Paris—refuses to shop at the superstore. As the friends mourn Dr. Mac, Wood’s daughter Elizabeth announces that she’s going to marry fellow college student Luke, who is the son of Duff, an old high-school flame of Wood’s. And as the year passes, Wood and Duff get together, while Milan, who has overcome a terrible past—poverty and her father’s suicide in front of her—tries to plan the wedding while ignoring Wood’s infidelity. The friends are preoccupied, too, as Mavis finds an unlikely sperm donor, has a baby, and realizes she’s gay; some louts attack Mavis, Jeter tries to save her, and Brundidge may at last have found love. As the year finally ends, there’s a wrap-up of a wedding with a difference.

More script than novel.