PATTY JANE'S HOUSE OF CURL (BALL Paperback - 1996

Prologue

PATTY JANE KEPT a drawer full of cotton bandanas spritzed with dimestore perfume - Tabu and Evening in Paris and, occasionally, My Sin, which I thought was a chic as chic could get. I helped out at the House of Curl after school and on Saturdays. Whenever anyone stank up the place with a permanent wave, I would be called upon to distribute the bandanas and tie them carefully, the way a nurse ties a doctor's surgical mask, over the nose and mouth of our customers. Everyone in the shop wore them (except for Clyde Chuka, the manicurist, who said Tabu gave him a worse headache than permanent-wave solution) so that the room looked overtaken by a bunch of Old West bandits assembled for a Dippety-Doo heist.

"Scented kerchiefs are one of the nice touches that separates our establishment from the others," Patty Jane often said. Other nice touches included homemade banana bread served with coffee to women basting under hair dryers; pale green smocks monogrammed with the initials of our regulars (we kept a supply of less personalized smocks--"V.I.P" and "First Lady"--on hand for walk-ins); and harp concerts courtesy of my Aunt Harriet, whose accompaniment to my bandana distribution was always the William Tell Overture.

Patty Jane, my mother, was big on nice touches.

"For cripes' sake," she said, "if you can't be a class act, why bother?"

She studied what society news was to be found in the Minneapolis Star as if she were a candidate for a PhD in High Living; she drove her rattly old DeSota around Lake of the Isles, picking out mansions she would live in were her inheritance more sizable than a pair of turquoise cuff links and an incomplete set of 1947 World Books; she tried on designer dresses at Dayton's Oval Room and Powers and then had my grandmother sew up copies on her heavy black Pfaff sewing machine.

"Just because my life began in the bargain basement," she said, "doesn't mean I can't take the escalator to Fine Crystals."

Truth be told, if my mother were to spend any time in Fine Crystals, it was guaranteed something would break.

“Fun and funny, spiked with tragedy and sad times.”
—USA Today

“A FUNNY, POIGNANT FIRST NOVEL ABOUT THE BONDS BETWEEN WOMEN.”
—Houston Chronicle

“Patty Jane’s House of Curl has the emotional warmth of Lake Wobegon and the tender/tough female characters who populated Fried Green Tomatoes. . . . A unique story.”
—St. Paul Pioneer Press

“WARM, TENDER, ULTIMATELY INSPIRATIONAL.”
—West Coast Review of Books

“HOMESPUN WISDOM PEPPERS EVERY PAGE.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Lorna Landvik stands by her characters . . . embracing their eccentricities, delighting in their accomplishments, forgiving them their failings. She knows these people and loves them—and gives us their story with uncommon wit and charm and, best of all, a wonderful sense of mischief.”
—STEVEN ZAILLIAN
Oscar-winning writer of
the screenplay for Schindler’s List

“Patty Jane’s House of Curl is the story of women ‘who were lucky enough to find a place where they could not only talk, but be heard.’ Like Ione’s famous coffee cakes, the frosting may be treacle-sweet, but underneath there’s something substantial.”
—The Dallas Morning News

“This book is worth reading and rereading. . . . Landvik evokes female bonding and tragedy in a humorous way.”
—The Register-Herald (West Virginia)

“Funny and romantic . . . Peopled with characters so real, so warm, so funny, the book could be a Northern Exposure in print. . . . Readers will be reminded that this is what it is like to live.”
—The Stuart News

“A cast of characters funny, sad, and real. You can’t help but laugh and shed a tear. Has been compared to Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, but for Midwesterners it holds a special appeal with a terrific sense of place.”
—BookWomen (Minnesota)

“Amazingly vivid . . . This novel breezes merrily along, but don’t read it without a hankie. This is a winner for fans of Garrison Keillor and Danielle Steel.”
—Library Journal

Lorna Landvik is also the author of the bestselling Your Oasis on Flame Lake and the upcoming The Tall Pine Polka. She has worked as an actor, a comedian, and a speed typist in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. She lives with her husband, two daughters, and their dog, Petunia.