The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is Ladies’ Home Journal Book Club pick for February! Join the conversation here.
In this dark comedy wrapped inside a wacky family drama, a vengeful old lady is hell bent on murdering an even older man…who has lost his mind.
Seventy-seven year old Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs come hell or high water. In 1953, he gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences.
Marylou has been plotting her revenge for fifty years when she accidentally discovers his whereabouts in Florida and her plans finally snap into action. She high-tails it to hot and humid Tallahassee, moves in down the block from where a now senile Spriggs lives with his daughter’s family, and begins the tricky work of insinuating herself into their lives. But she has no idea what a nest of yellow jackets she is stumbling into.
Before the novel is through, someone will be kidnapped, an unlikely couple will get engaged, someone will nearly die from eating a pineapple upside-down cake laced with anti-freeze, and that’s not all…
Told from the varied perspectives of an incredible cast of endearing oddball characters and written with the flare of a native Floridian, this is a lively, intricately plotted, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly touching family drama that combines the wit of Carl Hiaasen with the southern charm of Jill McCorkle.
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady: A Story Behind the Story
Read an Excerpt from The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
It’s impossible not to love a novel that starts out with a 77-year-old lady planning cold-blooded murder, especially when the old lady in question is as charming and funny as Stuckey-French’s Marylou. As she steadily worms her way into the world and family of her intended victim, this fast-paced and witty book expands to create a big-hearted, hilarious and touching portrait of a community. A lovely book.”
– Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is an often hilarious, always entertaining novel, but Elizabeth Stuckey-French has achieved much more. With remarkable wisdom and empathy, she has given us a profound meditation on what it means to be a family and the human heart’s complex, sidling path toward forgiveness.”
– Ron Rash, bestselling author of Serena and One Foot in Eden
If you liked the film “Little Miss Sunshine,” you’ll absolutely LOVE The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady! Not only whacked-out and wonderful, this novel is secretly very damn serious, too, as well as up-to-the-minute contemporary and compelling. Elizabeth Stuckey-French brings her completely original voice and vision to the theme of family—-and revenge. I couldn’t put it down.”
– Lee Smith, bestselling author of The Last Girls and On Agate Hill
How wonderful it is to find a writer who perfectly captures the spirit of this crazy age: that bizarre and irreducible mix of high and low culture, of tragedy and comedy. This is no mean literary feat. And Elizabeth Stuckey-French achieves it brilliantly. The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is not only a wildly entertaining novel, it is an important novel.”
– Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
In The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, Elizabeth Stuckey-French mines all the great stuff: love, heartache, family, revenge. And then she offers a gift, one we desperately need: She lays bare what truly makes the quirky, necessary heart of forgiveness tick. Grace and hard won wisdom flash through these funny, wonderful pages, leaving me to ruminate on three words: luminous, real, unforgettable.”
– Connie May Fowler, bestselling author of How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly and Before Women had Wings
