SOME DAYS THERE'S PIE

Alternately wise, poignant, droll and sassy, this debut charts the life-changing friendship of two singular Southern women. Tennessee-born Ruth turns 20 in the course of their relationship; Rose, from Texas, is 80 and dying of lung cancer. But it almost doesn't matter where they are on the time line: all their energy goes into getting the moment right, whether they're rescuing graffiti poet Cecil from the cops, spoiling awful Fred Fish's scam to build private boat canals at public expense by calling them mosquito control ditches, or savoring fried crab sandwiches. Unsentimental women who spurn birthday cakes, heaven and everlasting love, both are runaways from true believers—Ruth, for example, is escaping her churchy husband, Chuck, who had helped her leave a mother wedded to despair. The women meet by chance in a Lawsonville, N.C., five-and-ten, and Rose gets Ruth a receptionist job at the Lawsonville Ledger, where the octogenarian former ace reporter now hustles ads. Eventually, Ruth repays Rose by snatching her from a loving but smothering daughter, Carol, a nurse who wants Rose to quit smoking, take her pills and die by the book. Chronic escape artists able to tolerate some intimacy with each other only because they're both big on boundaries, Ruth and Rose never duck a challenge. Landis does a fine job of rendering these memorable characters, two iconoclasts on a quest to live big until they die. Agent, Cheryl Pientka, Henry Dunow Literary Agency. National advertising. (May 6)

Forecast:An author tour is planned. If Landis talks as charmingly as she writes, she could take off as a voice of the modern but eternally quirky South.