Books

One Knife, One Fork, One Spoon

Renna Newlin is a woman in her forties who seduces her teen son’s best friend. But that is not the main point of the novel. Renna has problems that drive her into that relationship, and they are Friedmann’s big focus. Her kids are spoiled and difficult; her husband is boorish, judgmental, and racially insensitive. She needs a life where all she has are one knife, one fork, and one spoon.

Odds

Anna Duffy seems clueless as to just how bad things have gotten in her life until she is forced by tragedy and its aftermath to sit up and take notice. Barely out of high school, she married George, a cold and condescending New Orleans lawyer. Their twin sons, born soon thereafter, appear to provide one child for each parent to love. George Junior is a bully like his father and physically normal. Gregor was born without arms and legs but with amazing wisdom and a heart of gold. In a dramatic and fateful moment, Anna is forced to choose between saving the life of only one of her boys, then age six. Anna and George’s responses to the loss drive the couple further apart. George turns to another woman while Anna seeks relief in losing herself (as well as her savings) at the casino slot machines. These are dark subjects, certainly, but Friedmann’s caustic style is hilariously funny. Best is the priceless and unforgettable characterization of Gregor.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint; First Edition (September 20, 2000)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 158243087X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1582430874
Available on Amazon

An Organized Panic

An Organized Panic sets sister against brother, born secular humanist against later-in-life evangelical Christian. The sibling squabble underscores a serious struggle, certainly, but this is another tale told in the darkly humorous Friedmann voice–and set in the New Orleans only a native would know. The manuscript took second place in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition in late 2012 and could be her best story telling yet. Friedman will challenge you to think about our own belief system as she “….opens our conversation on the sympathetic athiest narrator.”

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Old Stone Press (September 15, 2017)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1938462297
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1938462290
Available on Amazon

Do Not Open for 50 Years

Fans of Friedmann’s TOO JEWISH will want to open DO NOT OPEN.” -Southern Jewish Life

Three generations of witty, willful women…what’s not to love?

The world turns upside down when Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, blasting apart three generations of women in the final installment of the The Cooper Family Saga. Darby Cooper, the daughter of Bernie and Letty whom we met in Too Jewish and came of age with in Too Jewish: The Next Generation, has become a bestselling New Orleans author, drawing on the tragedy of her father’s life.

But despite her success, family, as always, is complex and problematic. Letty, so loving in Too Jewish, has morphed into a self-centered and willful woman—far from the kind of wise bubbeh Darby expected for her daughter Honor. But it turns out Honor is very much Letty’s girl. However, Letty’s gone missing after the storm, leaving her daughter perplexed and ambivalent. Although not yet sad. Because Letty’s pretty indomitable–your classic Tough Old Babe in designer clothes and teetering heels.

Still the traumatic search for Letty would be Darby’s main post-storm event if Honor hadn’t come back from evacuating to Florida with the boyfriend from hell. Sciutto claims he’s a mobster and, in all other ways (let’s start with crude and intolerant), is a betrayal of every core value Darby has rescued from her tragic and treacherous family history. Furthermore, as she struggles in temporary quarters in shattered post-Katrina New Orleans, Darby also has to confront the same long-lost high-school classmates whose cruelty played a nasty role in her father’s death decades before. Fortunately for the reader, her grief and bewilderment are tempered by her quick wit and humorous take at even the darkest moments.

Fans of the trilogy will eat this one up, as the Cooper women, so often so far from each other emotionally, draw ever closer, finding just how strong the bonds of family and love can be. Having followed them this far, we know and love all their quirks, all their neuroses, almost all their jokes (but there are so many!). But here’s what we don’t know–will they manage to overcome their differences and finally pull together? We’re betting on them!

Publisher ‏ : ‎ booksBnimble (April 7, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 7, 2015
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0990454363
Available on Amazon

A Little Bit Ruined

It’s been seven years, and Eleanor Rushing is still waiting for Maxim Walters, the love of her life, to leave his wife and move into her rambling mansion on St. Charles Avenue. But when she meets Dr. Richard Kimball—tall, dark, handsome, and a plastic surgeon—her life takes on a whole new direction. Smitten, she decides to go under his knife to alter her looks, and her life. But the summer of 2005 has other plans in store and Hurricane Katrina interrupts Eleanor’s transformation.

As the water rises, self-absorbed Eleanor, thinking only skin deep, floats on the surface of the disaster. She and her longtime housekeeper Naomi wade through the flooded streets of New Orleans, and wind up in Houston along with Dr. Kimball, who gives Eleanor more plastic surgery. This time the result is hideous. Eleanor returns to New Orleans with a body as wrecked as the city and neither will ever be the same. 

In this tragicomic novel, Patty Friedmann deftly exposes the damaged and tenuously intact faces of New Orleans. Friedmann helps us to understand that transformation is probably the most difficult image to process—especially when change has been wrought by someone or something beyond our control.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint (February 24, 2007)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1593761457
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1593761455
Available on Amazon

Side Effects – A New Orleans Love Story

New Orleans’s idiosyncrasies have been embraced by the world; Patty Friedmann gives us a tender, hilarious portrait of them in her new novel Side Effects. Set in N.O. Drugstore where hardscrabble black Pigeontown meets stuffy white Tulane, Side Effects is peopled with the true New Orleans oddballs who scuffle between the Seasonal Specials and Depends aisles — all in full view of the pharmacy staff. Proudly plump blonde Luciana Jambon, dreadlocked and neatly compulsive Lennon Israel, and up-from-the-‘hood Vendetta Greene have their own dramas of romance and friendship.

A wacky and suspenseful story of family conflict and a death under suspicious circumstances, Side Effects serves most as a comical reminder that New Orleans loves nothing more than to laugh at itself.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint; First Edition (November 29, 2005)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1593760965
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1593760960
Available on Amazon

Secondhand Smoke

Having driven her grown children far from home, cynical widow Jerusha scoffs at their choices in life and finds herself  becoming unexpectedly attached to her ten-year-old next-door neighbor, the son of an equally dysfunctional mother.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley Trade (November 2, 2004)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0425198286
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0425198285
Available on Amazon

Eleanor Rushing

Eleanor Rushing knows Maxim Walters loves her. At the crowded city council meeting, he chooses to sit beside her; from his pulpit, he preaches only to her, a vision in white sitting in the first pew. Soon, he invites her along on a business trip to Nashville, where they make love all night long. But Maxim sees things a little differently. The distinguished and very married preacher denies his love for Eleanor, but she understands his reluctance to walk away from the plain wife and the narrow path of virtue he chose long ago. Refusing to be refused, Eleanor showers Maxim with gifts and volunteers at the church simply to be near him.

Though she appears to be undaunted, Eleanor is, in fact, deeply troubled. Sparing no detail, she recounts the tragedy that left her mute for four years, and the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her friends and family. Though these memoirs are often at odds with those of others around her, the now-loquacious Eleanor charms us completely until we can’t help but become her willing and faithful supporters. In this narrative tour-de-force– at once hilarious and deeply moving–Friedmann gives a memorable look at the willfulness of obsessive love, the caustic mix of money and leisure, and the power of memory to damage the soul.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint; Revised ed. edition (March 3, 2000)
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1582430772
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1582430775
Available on Amazon