The Lady With the Alligator Purse - Hardcover

In a novel spanning the years 1978-1991, Finney ( Winterchill ) considers the thorny question of what role the past should play in the present. The book's 14 chapters, which read like a series of third-person short stories, probe the distinct points of view of three protagonists: placid, boring Billy; his bitter and curt sister, Ann; and their efficient, patronizing cousin, Kay. All three are somewhat lost, grappling as they pass through their 30s with memories incarnated in the fragment of a childhood jump-rope rhyme that gives the book its title. Twice-divorced Billy still optimistically searches for love, widowed Ann struggles with two teenage daughters, and Kay builds a successful business and solves everyone else's problems but lacks a fulfilling life of her own. They have troubled relationships with their aging, far-from-perfect parents, who moved to California from Kansas before the children were born but whose stories of their Midwestern origins fascinate Kay in particular. Finney illuminates life's small moments and the complex nature of family ties with perception and penetration, but his too-faithful rendition of everyday tedium and disappointments may leave readers feeling dispirited.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lady Conveys Warm Image of California Family's Life.  
Paul Pintarich, Book Editor, The Oregonian.

"Fine novelists like Ernest Finney are capable of creating fictional families so believable that we share the pain and love that holds them together. In "The Lady With the Alligator Purse," Finney lets us into the lives of a California family whose members share not only pain and love, but also a hard-won and intricate understanding that brings them closer through each compelling chapter.  Hemingway said good novels must be truer than life itself, but we don't see those kinds of novels much anymore.  Finney is an exception."