How Perfect Is That

WHEN YOU'RE PERFECT, YOU CAN'T FALTER...Because if you do, the piranhas will get you. Blythe Young, Austin socialite, has two secrets she can't allow to escape: she's actually high-flying trailer trash, and her divorce left her penniless. Before becoming Mrs. Henry "Trey" Biggs-Dix III, Blythe owned the exclusive catering company Wretched Xcess, and for the second time she's determined to fake it 'til she makes it -- passing off warehouse club taquitos as Petites Tournedos Bearnaise a la Mexicaine and relying on her own private concoction of Stoli and pharmaceuticals as a substitute for sleep.But then a blabber-mouthed accountant puts the IRS on Blythe's trail at a most unfortunate moment -- just when her catering staff turns vicious about missing pay, and a garden party of Austin belles sniffs out the Crisco in the pate. There's no option except to cut and run. Blythe's been ducking calls from her friend Millie for over a decade, but now Millie is the only person with a heart big enough to take her in. So, just one step ahead of the law, Blythe sputters in on fumes of gas to the fleabag co-op boarding house at the University of Texas where the two met and that Millie still runs.What do you do when you hit bottom? Sharing a bathroom again with anyone -- let alone computer geeks and white Rasta wannabes -- wasn't in Blythe's game plan. But in a time when both new and old money can turn into no money before you can say Jimmy Choo, Blythe's story is a morality tale for the new millennium as, with the help of her reluctant housemates, she faces down the creme de la creme of Austin society one last time, and by doing so finds the way out of her own ethical quagmire.

Sarah Bird lives with her family in Austin, Texas, where she performs her own material regularly at the Hyde Park Theatre. The author of six previous novels, she is currently working on her latest, about reconnecting and the empty nest.