A big-hearted debut novel which follows the adventures of a Southern girl in the Big Apple.
Sarah Waters is a reluctant Camellia Society debutante. She has always felt ill-fitted to the old-fashioned gentility of Southern womanhood and family life, but in Charleston, established rules and manners mean everything.
As Sarah grows older, moving north and navigating love and life in New York, she and her group of displaced deb sisters try to define themselves within the realities of modern life. Heartbreak, illness, addiction, career disappointments: this was not the hazy, happy future promised to them by their Camellia mothers.
But events outside her control - an unplanned pregnancy, a family death - lead Sarah back home to Charleston and to some difficult choices. And only then does she realise that as much as she tries to deny it, where she comes from will always affect where she ends up. Perhaps the motto 'Once a Camellia, always a Camellia' has more of a power over her than she would care to admit.
Tender, hilarious and immensely readable, Girls in Trucks is a debut by a unique new voice.