Although the two women are opposites in nearly every way, they bring out the best in each other: Sugar convinces Pearl to loosen up and accompany her to a Saturday night juke joint, and Sugar promises to go to church for two months of Sundays. Pearl is struck by Sugar's uncanny likeness to Jude, and is determined to become Sugar's friend in spite of vocal disapproval. All except Pearl, Sugar's next-door neighbor, who more than a decade ago lost her beloved daughter, Jude, to a vicious rapist/murderer. Upon her mother's death in 1955, Sugar is willed a modest home in Bigelow, Ark., but when she moves into town, and supports herself the only way she knows, the female population rises in wrath against her. Louis and then Detroit, brings more degradation, along with an ever-hardening heart. Turning tricks at age 12, and leaving town four years later to try her luck in St. As a baby, Sugar is abandoned by her mother and raised by a trio of prostitutes who run an Arkansas bordello. Here, the hooker with a heart of gold is instead a hooker with a past so tarnished no amount of polishing can change her fate. With her eponymous anti-heroine, debut novelist McFadden breaks the mold of a venerable stereotype.
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