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2024: The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.
2024: The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.
When Adela Woods tells her parents she’s pregnant, they immediately send her a thousand miles away to stay with her grandmother in Padua Beach. The intention is that she will leave her baby in ‘the forgotten Panhandle of Florida’. and resume her suburban life nine months later as though nothing happened. But Adela’s plans are soon washed away by the tide.
First, Adela meets Emory, a new mother determined to defy the expectations of everyone around her, returning to high school with her newborn baby strapped to her chest. Then she meets Simone, ringleader of ‘the Girls,’ a group of young mothers who create a village together in the back of her red truck—dancing, breastfeeding, raising their children and themselves.
The town thinks they’ve lost their way. Really, they are finding it.
But as they look for love, make and break friendships, navigate the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood, Adela, Emory and Simone also find themselves on an inescapable collision course with one another.
Florida panhandle
The Florida panhandle is the north western part of the U.S. state of Florida. It is a salient roughly 200 miles long, bordered by Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its eastern boundary is arbitrarily defined.
The small town of Padua Beach, Florida is fictional but reminiscent of so many along the panhandle.
Destination/location: Florida (panhandle) Author/guide: Leila Mottley Departure Time: 2024
Back to Results1891: Sister. Rival. Protector. The spellbinding story of a forgotten daughter and a forgotten goddess.
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