While the setting may be Southern, the quirky “Ladies” of this short story collection explore universal themes that touch all women’s lives: the search for love, family, home, and a connection to our own authentic selves. Based in South Carolina’s and Georgia’s Lowcountry, the main characters range in age from seventeen to seventy-nine. But whether they live in mansions along the Battery in Charleston or in the hamlets that dot Highway 17, they find that it’s the low places in life, the low places of the heart, that teach the greatest lessons. From a teen-age virgin whose sexy cyber identity gets her into trouble – to a frustrated wife who doesn’t fall in love with her husband until he moves into their backyard tree house – to a reluctant beauty queen forced into the Miss Hell Hole Swamp competition – these so-called ladies expose the irony of word and the gardenia façade that hides the Grit, Wit and It that typifies the Southern female psyche.