Book excerpt: A Three-Turtle Summer By Janelle Meraz Hooper Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 1949...Grace and her five-year-old daughter Glory are living through A Three-Turtle Summer-a summer so hot that the turtles are dying. It's also the summer that Grace's mother and sisters join forces with Grace to help her dump Dwayne, her abusive husband, whom her sister describes as meaner than a rattlesnake and dumber than adobe. Besides her Hispanic family, a rich list of characters also assist her escape, including: Sako, an American-born Japanese neighbor whose former home was the internment camp at Poston, Arizona; two gay dance instructors; a Negro gospel singer who sells Lip-Smackin' Barbecue out of the trunk of her new orange Cadillac convertible; and Rudolf, her older sister's husband who's a colonel in the Army. A Three-Turtle Summer was a first place fiction winner in the 2002 Bold Media Awards.