Queenie's Place

Guilt momentarily forgotten, I whipped around to face Tom. "My God, what kind of place have you brought us to? What kind of people would advertise their own racism?"

Billy leaned over the seat. "How come they spelled clan with a k?

 ***

From the moment military wife Doreen Donovan sees the "Welcome to Klan Country" sign outside Goldsboro, North Carolina, it's one culture shock after another. Set in rural North Carolina in the early 1970s, Queenie's Place is the story of an unusual sisterhood that forms between a thirty-something white woman from Southern California and a fifty-something black woman in the rural South. The women Doreen meets at MCB Camp Puller, the military base where she and her family have moved, are the dullest, stuffiest, most stuck-up women she's ever run across, and frankly, they don't think much of her either. She's hot, miserable, and bored. When her car has a flat in front of a roadhouse in Richland, Doreen finds Queenie inside, holding forth at the piano. It's broad daylight and the place is jumpin'. Besides the music, there's dancing, and the best barbecue in North Carolina. Doreen is reluctant to leave, especially finding in Queenie someone she's drawn to, and Queenie doesn't expect to see Doreen again, but Doreen returns to Queenie's Place and a deep, abiding friendship begins. Without warning, Queenie's place is closed down and the women there are accused of prostitution and bootlegging. A born crusader, even having demonstrated against the war in which her husband fought, Doreen comes to Queenie's defense. But Doreen is in the South now and it's the '70s. Whatever Doreen has in mind to bring justice for Queenie and restore her livelihood will soon go astray, just like the best laid of plans.