Last Ride to Graceland

Blues musician Cory Beth Ainsworth has always known that her mama, Laura Berry, spent one wild, glamorous year as a backup singer for Elvis. Known as "Honey" during her brief singing career, Laura was at Graceland the night Elvis died. She returned home to South Carolina, married her high school sweetheart and settled down to raise her daughter. But after Laura's death, Honey discovers a vintage Stutz Blackhawk in her stepfather's shed: a mint-condition car that clearly belonged to the King himself. Fueled by a need to delve into her own history and discover how it might be bound up with Elvis's story, Cory takes to the road, retracing Laura's journey in the opposite direction. In her fourth novel, Last Ride to Graceland, Kim Wright follows Cory's circuitous and illuminating pilgrimage from Beaufort, S.C., to Memphis, through the key places of her mother's life.

Wright (The Unexpected Waltz) tells her story in both Cory's and Laura's voices, shifting back and forth between 1977 and the present day. Several characters--Laura's sweetheart Bradley, her fellow backup singer and friend Marilee--appear in both narratives, with different aspects of their characters highlighted through Laura's and Cory's eyes. Elvis himself, both the man and the myth, is also a prominent figure, as flawed and human as any of Wright's less famous characters.

With a tone as Southern as its geography, Last Ride to Graceland is a treat for readers who love the King, enjoy a good family saga or long for the open road. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
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