Sweet Tea and Mayhaw Pie: A Bon Amie Novel

Nestled between the Atchafalaya Basin and Sugar Island, a little off the beaten path few strangers wander by, but every now and then something exciting happens to the people of Bon Amie.

Arthur St. Giles died a lonely old man, still carrying the love of his sweet Charlotta. Kept from marriage because of his love’s lack of dowry, he sets up the St. Giles Trust for the women of Bon Amie. Now a hundred years later the St. Giles Trust is as much a part of Bon Amie as mayhaw pie served on a sweltering summer night.

Babette St. Giles, a romantic at heart, has sworn off relationships. She’s never had a successful one, what with her mother’s words ringing in her ears reminding her she’d never know for sure if a man loved her for her or for her daddy’s money. Bound by family tradition, she is the keeper of the trust. However, Babette finds out that if no one in town marries by the year’s end, the dowry will revert to the state.

Babette decides to hurry things along and try her hand at matchmaking for three of her closest friends. Fay is a single mother and is always looking for the right man to take care of her, but has a history of choosing the wrong man. MaryJoe, a middle-aged new friend who traded a life of her own to be the only caregiver to her ailing parents, now finds herself facing a lonely future. And Reine, a childhood friend, has just returned to Bon Amie in search of answers about the death of her mother and the truth of her childhood.

But three months is not very long to set up a successful match. Especially when she doesn’t want her friends to know precisely what she’s up to.

In the end, one friend will elope, nullifying the dowry; one will find true love but needs to wait for marriage; one will decide that she is enough without the love of a man; and one will unexpectedly find love even though she hadn’t been looking for it. But what they all find is a friendship that now binds them forever and is worth more than any dowry.