Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham

Finally read the second book by Leila Meacham.published in 2012,  paperback is 466 pages plus a guide for book club readers or others.  Enjoyed it, not quite as much as "Roses" or it's prequel "Somerset" which was her  3rd novel,  but it was a good summer, light  novel reading.  The characters are interesting and the story kept my interest through the entire novel.  The prologue opens in 2008, " The call he'd been expecting for 22 years came at midnight when he was working late at his desk.  He had a second's start, the kind of stab he'd experienced often in the first years when the telephone rang in the early hours....." So it begins with Jesuit priest, Father John Caldwell.  The call is from Trey, his best friend from childhood and through high school.  The three main characters, John, Trey and Catherine,  three children with heart tugging stories whose lives are well portrayed by the title flower, tumbleweeds.  What  could have been a gushy story keeps interest and winds through their lives as each character develops into an individual, unique as the Texas prarie landscape.

 It is quite different from the author's sagas of Roses and Somerset,  but readable.  Surprising outcome as I  had thought all along there would be a mistake, a Hollywood ending was not to be as the author explains in the reading guide. I am not sure what southern fiction means, as this is  described, but  find it intriguing and as always the author has done accurate research.

I give it 4 ****.