Another one for the to-be-read pile...thanks to Lauren at Random House:

GETTING MOTHER’S BODY, by the award winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. If you haven’t heard of Parks yet, trust me, you will soon enough. Not only is she a well known playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, she is also the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Topdog/Underdog.”

In GETTING MOTHER’S BODY, we meet Billy Beede, a teenage girl pregnant with an illegitimate baby, living with her aunt and uncle, and dirt poor. Billy’s mother, Willa Mae has been dead for six years, yet one day Billy comes home to find a fateful letter telling her that her mother’s burial spot in Arizona is about to be plowed up to make way for a new supermarket. As Willa Mae’s only daughter, Billy is said to be the heiress to her mother’s substantial, yet unconfirmed fortune. The twist? Milla Wae’s jewels are said to be buried with her!

With her aunt and uncle in tow, Billy steals a pickup truck and heads to Arizona…possibly to claim her fortune.

Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls says, “Suzan-Lori Parks is a terrific writer whose characters don’t so much talk to us as sing,
full-throated, of their joys and miseries.”