Nearly fifteen years after the death of her childhood friend in a violent hit-and-run accident, Noor Khan is still in the midst of struggle. With a failing equestrian business and suspicions of an unfaithful husband, her years of physical and psychological therapies have driven her to cross a line that blurs what is law, and what is right. When Noo
"When do-gooder Noor and frumpy home-schooled Jaycee find in Jaycee's luggage a cheese stuffed with drugs that she has unwittingly smuggled home from Peru, greed overcomes good instincts, and soon the unlikely pair are breaking bad in Vermont. Noor, a therapeutic riding instructor, and Jaycee, daughter of a plagiarizing children's book author who has insisted on raising her as though it's still 1860, discover that they have more than selling drugs in common, including Gerry Wilcox, a sexy slacker admirer of Noor's, recruited to find them a connection. Ugly secrets, including the truth about the death of a childhood friend, some outrageous revelations about Jaycee's increasingly enfeebled parents, and Noor's burgeoning doubts about her marriage and motherhood, come to light as Jaycee and Noor make tentative strides toward a less prickly, though still lopsided friendship. A road trip to Miami in pursuit of more drugs brings them face to face with their capacity for betrayal, and a caper becomes a calamity. Darkly comic and beautifully rendered, A WELL-MADE BED goes beyond the tropes of the buddy tale to explore just how easily each of us might step over the line from being a clean-nosed good citizen to being a felon."--
"The novel deftly navigates between narrators, keeping its momentum even when jumping back and forth in time as the women-and the reader-discover a dark secret that's been hidden away for 15 years. The storyline hurtles forward at a steady pace, keeping the reader engaged and managing to answer questions while creating new ones. . . . an absorbing read. A weighty tale that keeps the reader intrigued and entranced."
-Kirkus Reviews
"A Well-Made Bed depicts an eclectic, morally dubious collection of characters . . . (who) exhibit a wily, formidable strength as they scrape their way out of bad situations, making the best of the cards they've been dealt"
-ShelfAwareness
"Lovers of literary fiction will appreciate the fullness of the characters, the topsy-turvy plot twists, and the thought-provoking themes."
-Foreword Reviews
"Frucht and Alberts construct a narrative that subverts genre conventions to effectively tell a new version of an old story, one with enough surprising prose to satisfy a wide variety of readers."
-Northwest Review of Books
