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THE LAST LIST OF MISS JUDITH KRATT

Andrea Bobotis

Judith, Quincy, and Rosemarie Kratt once had the run of their small textile town of Bound, South Carolina. Their father owned Kratt Mercantile Company, a successful department store on Main Street. Judith managed the store inventory and led occasional tours of the property, while Quincy bartered in town gossip, buying and selling secrets to ingratiate himself to their father. Rosemarie was the town beauty.

All of that changed on one fateful evening in 1929, when Quincy paid the ultimate price for a secret too consequential to stay hidden for long—and when Rosemarie fled the town, never to be seen again.

Never to be seen again, that is, until now.

Decades later, Judith and Olva—a black woman who has lived with the Kratts since childhood, occupying the unsettling space between family member and one of the “help”—have built a quiet, uneventful existence for themselves on the grounds of the formerly elegant Kratt family estate. When Judith receives a postcard from Rosemarie that reads only, “Sister, I am coming home,” she knows that existence is about to be upended. In an anxious attempt to retain some semblance of control over the house and its histories, she begins writing an inventory of the Kratt family heirlooms, from the Tiffany lamp that heralded the arrival of electricity in Bound to the Purdey shotgun that Quincy inherited just days before his death. But the truth Rosemarie seems determined to finally tell threatens everything about life as Judith has known it—and threatens to expose the lifetime of secrets that she and Olva had hoped to take to their graves.

THE LAST LIST OF MISS JUDITH KRATT recalls the Southern lyricism, dark family secrets, and suspenseful storytelling of Wiley Cash's The Land More Kind Than Home and of M.O. Walsh's My Sunshine Away, with no small shades of Kathryn Stockett's The Help and a protagonist who is a Southern cousin to Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. Like the Kratt siblings, Andrea Bobotis was born and raised in South Carolina. She received her PhD in English Literature from the University of Virginia, and her essays have appeared in journals and book collections such as Victorian Studies and the Irish University Review. Her short story “Kudzu” won second place in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in 2015, and in 2014, THE LAST LIST OF MISS JUDITH KRATT was the runner-up for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. She now lives in Denver, where she teaches with the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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Andrea Bobotis has written an amazing novel, one which interrogates, with such controlled and beautiful writing, what it means to be Southern. Utilizing a unique form and a carefully-crafted mystery, Bobotis is a writer capable of deep truths, and this novel announces her as a major voice. (Kevin Wilson, author The Family Fang, Perfect Little World, and Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine)

“Bobotis's debut is sure to place her alongside established authors such as Fannie Flagg. Rich in detail, it will carry readers between past and present, presenting historical issues of race, class, and belonging.”

Capturing the unique, singular voice of a once-genteel South that hid its deadly secrets and brutal crimes behind facades of grand houses, Andrea Bobotis gently leads you down a garden path of one family's shameful story only to leave you gasping at its devastating, inevitable destination. If William Faulkner were still alive, I'm pretty sure he'd wish he had written this book. —Emily Carpenter

one of the best books of summer 2019 Read more...

interviuew in BEA special Read more...

As the keeper of the family treasures and the family secrets, Miss Judith Kratt is a Southern eccentric in the tradition of Faulkner's Miss Emily. But Miss Judith does not wallow in the past or embrace the dead. Instead, she works to protect the living. THE LAST LIST OF MISS JUDITH KRATT is a universal and timely story that exposes the dangers of nostalgia and the value of assessing both things and people in a clear-eyed, honest way. It's a thoroughly captivating story and it's beautifully told. (Tiffany Quay Tyson, author of Three Rivers and The Past is Never)

Told in Judith's delicately snarky voice, the atmospheric narrative will keep you in both tears and stitches. (Galley Love of the Week)

“The well-told tale unfolds like a magnolia, slowly revealing a languid beauty.”

“Breakthrough debut novel that stands side by side with titles by Fannie Flagg of Fried Green Tomatoes fame and even Eudora Welty with her stories of relationships between community and families.”

Terrific... This is a masterful spin on a Golden Age cozy plot line updated and with excellent characters and a beautifully crafted Southern setting. Bobotis is definitely a writer to watch. Read more...

Andrea Bobotis is a new, original voice as Southern as they come! In THE LAST LIST OF MISS JUDITH KRATT, she unravels a complicated web of dirty Southern secrets. Using masterful writing and a perfectly calculated reveal of damaged history, she ends up weaving a tapestry that is so much more. – Leah Weiss, bestselling author of If the Creek Don't Rise

The droll voice of Andrea Bobotis's heroine, Judith Kratt, might charm you – but don't be fooled into thinking this is simply one woman's trip down memory lane. The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt is a multilayered story about family, race, loss, and loyalty, featuring a complex cast of characters led by a woman who learns it's never too late for growth and change. (Cynthia Swanson, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller and The Glass Forest)