Love Palace — Meredith Sue Willis

The narrator of Meredith Sue Willis's new novel has just turned forty, quit her job, been jilted by her live-in boyfriend and suspended by her therapist for nonpayment. Against her better judgment, she takes a job at a settlement house known as "Love Palace" in a run-down community that is about to be razed for urban renewal. Here Martha discovers that she has a talent for managing the dysfunctional institution and its staff. She is attracted by the charismatic reverend who oversees Love Palace as well as by Robby, one of the staff members, who is rich, handsome, recently released from a hospital after a suicide attempt, and intensely ambivalent about his sexuality. Along with the Love Palace crew of runaways, derelicts, struggling blue collar workers, and a former Black Panther among others, Martha has to deal with her ex-hillbilly mother, who favors shoulder pads and big hair; her sister the big-shot lawyer; and her dying Jewish grandmother.