For our inaugural Dusty post, let me remind you of their purpose.  We don’t mean dusty as in old, necessarily.   Just as in, sitting around on the shelf collecting dust.  Possibly a candidate for the weeding cart!  Oh horrors!   As a librarian, it breaks my heart to see books languishing on the shelf that I know would be checked out and enjoyed if only someone would find them.  So we would like to pay tribute to those books waiting patiently for their reader.  Our hope is, if you’re a librarian, you’ll pull these guys off the shelf and stick them on your endcap or your next display.  Or perhaps you’ll handsell it to the next patron who asks you for something good to read.  If you’re a reader, we hope to entice you to look beyond the bestseller list and ask about these books.

And with that, we bring you…

Tully by Paullina Simons. 1994.

Simon’s first novel had a large print run and garnered positive reviews, but quickly hit the remainder table.  Possibly thanks to it’s door-stop length (594 p!) and fairly bland cover.  It doesn’t help that Simons went on to write all over the map, from historical Russian fiction to twisty thriller to college noir.  But if you can get this book into a reader’s hands, they just might fall for tough-girl Tully.  Her lower-class Topeka, KS adolescence is marred by an abusive mother, and the suicide of a close friend.  Things don’t get much better when she begins an affair to escape her reality.  You know,  I can’t understand why this wasn’t an Oprah selection!  It sounds bleak and depressing, but it’s really an honest and well-spun story with great characters.