Giveaway: Miss Hildreth Wore Brown - Olivia deBelle Byrd

Hi readers!

In January of 2011 I read a gem of a book, Miss Hildreth Wore Brown: Anecdotes of a Southern Belle by Olivia deBelle Byrd. 

It was a lot of fun and really made me laugh, and not just kind of laugh, full out loud laughing.

Then in April, Miss Olivia was kind enough to come back to the blog for an author interview. I learned that her and I share a love for the author John Steinbeck. Which I thought was pretty cool!
Now she is back with a guest post and giveaway.
First the post, Olivia, take it away!

SOUTHERN FUNERALS OR HE JUST WOKE UP DEAD

Funerals in the South are a serious business. They entail prodigious amounts of food, flowers, and family and no shortage of humorous tales. My friend from the charming town of Eufaula, Alabama, tells of going to visit her elderly mother each morning, where the first thing her mother does is peruse the obituaries. Her mother mentioned an acquaintance that had died with the explanation, “He just woke up dead.” It reminded me of the time I called my niece, who also resides in a small Alabama town. When I inquired how things were she replied, “I’ve never seen anything like it, Aunt Olivia. People are dying who have never died before!”

As Southern women we do tend to obsess about our own funerals no matter how hale and hearty we are. We are just sure our children are not going to get it right. My friend, Louise, was telling me about a conversation she had with her daughter who lives up North. Apparently this daughter has lived up North too long. Louise was reminding her about some funeral detail she desired when her daughter said, “Mother, why don’t you just get cremated? It is very common up North.”

“Honey,” Louise exclaimed, “have you lost your mind? This is the one time in my life when I will be all laid out and every friend I have will come to see me. Each hair will be in place, it won’t matter whether my dress will zip, and there won’t be a chip on my nail polish—plus my stomach will be flat because I will be lying down.”

“Louise,” I said, “you’re the only person I know who can make an open casket sound like a fashion show!”

Speaking of fashion shows, my friend Lou Ellen had a stroke of bad luck. When her grandmother died, Lou Ellen did not have an appropriate dress in her closet so she went out and purchased the perfect funeral dress. As it turned out, it was a mite too perfect. When Lou Ellen viewed the open casket, there was Granny wearing the exact same dress. There was not a Southern woman in that funeral home who could come up with the correct compliment for that one.

Not long ago, I committed a terrible faux pas. Louise called to tell me about our mutual friend, Anna Mae, whose mother-in-law had passed away. Not listening as well as I should, I processed it as Anna Mae’s mother dying. Being the efficient Southern Belle that I am, I immediately wrote a very nice condolence note. I even mentioned how sweet and beautiful her mother looked the last time we visited and that would be my last remembrance of her.

I soon discovered my error albeit too late to retrieve the errant condolence note. I had no choice but to call Anna Mae and admit my error. I told her that when she received my very nice note to just strike out her mother’s name and insert her mother-in-law’s. I also mentioned, since her mother is eighty-six years old, she might not want to tell her that she had died.

Just the other day, Louise was lamenting that it is too bad we have to die to look our best. “Look at it this way, Louise,” I replied, “it beats being cremated.”

Olivia deBelle Byrd is the third generation to call Panama City, Florida, home where she resides with her husband, Tommy Cooley. She is the author of Miss Hildreth Wore Brown—Anecdotes of a Southern Belle, which is her first collection of humorous essays. Like many Southerners, Olivia has a penchant for turning ordinary happenings into entertainment. Visit her website at www.oliviadebellebyrd.com

Now the giveaway.

Today she is graciously offering up 3 copies of her amazing book to some lucky people across the world.

Let me tell you about the book again, just in case you didn't click an above link.

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FROM AMAZON:

While Olivia deBelle Byrd was repeating one of her many Southern stories for the umpteenth time, her long-suffering husband looked at her with glazed over eyes and said,“Why don’t you write this stuff down?” Thus was born Miss Hildreth Wore Brown—Anecdotes of a Southern Belle. If the genesis for a book is to shut your wife up, I guess that’s as good as any. On top of that, Olivia’s mother had burdened her with one of those Southern middle names kids love to make fun. To see “deBelle” printed on the front of a book seemed vindication for all the childhood teasing. With storytelling written in the finest Southern tradition from the soap operas of Chandler Street in the quaint town of Gainesville, Georgia, to a country store on the Alabama state line, Oliviade Belle Byrd delves with wit and amusement into the world of the Deep South with all its unique idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms. The characters who dance across the pages range from Great-Aunt LottieMae, who is as “old-fashioned and opinionated as the day is long,” to Mrs. Brewton, who calls everyone “dahling” whether they are darling or not, to Isabella with her penchant for mint juleps and drama. Humorous anecdotes from a Christmas coffee, where one can converse with a lady who has Christmas trees with blinking lights dangling from her ears, to Sunday church,where a mink coat is mistaken for possum, will delight Southerners and baffle many a non-Southerner. There is the proverbial Southern beauty pageant, where even a six-month-old can win a tiara, to a funeral faux-pas of the iron clad Southern rule—one never wears white after Labor Day and, dear gussy, most certainly not to a funeral. Miss Hildreth Wore Brown—Anecdotes of a Southern Belle is guaranteed to provide an afternoon of laugh-out-loud reading and hilarious enjoyment.

NOW FOR THE GIVEAWAY
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3 winners. Worldwide.

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