Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller A Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club Selection Welcome to Florabama, Alabama—a place where you can stop to sip a co'cola or iced tea and think about money and love. If you had'em, you were free to think about other things. If you didn't you couldn't think about anything else. "We've been screwed blue and tattooed," quips Hilly Pruitt, upon hearing the news of the closing of Cherished Lady, the local lingerie factory where she's worked a lifetime. The same day the plant closes, Bonnie Duke Cullman, former-deb turned Atlanta-society-wife, has herself been downsized—right out of her marriage and picture-perfect life. In an unlikely alliance, Bonnie, Hilly, and the rest of the ex-bra seamstresses join forces in the "Displaced Homemakers Program" at a podunk community college. Together they endure a midlife survival course where the events of a single year forever alter the way they see the world and their places in it.