Miss Julia Stands Her Ground

by: Ann B. Ross

Published by: Viking

Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhar

Ever since I read the first Miss Julia book, Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, I've liked her. Some would say she's an untrue stereotypical steel magnolia. She was and is. But she's also ready to, at this later stage, take life by the horns, which makes her appealing. And sometimes she's even funny.

The seventh installment, Miss Julia Stands Her Ground, finds our genteel heroine up against the wicked Brother Vernon Paced who has had the audacity to question the paternity of Little Lloyd Puckett-Springer. Anyone with eyeballs can see that Little Lloyd is the spitting image of his daddy, legitimacy aside, the late Wesley Lloyd Springer. Miss Julia, having grown quite attached to the child, is sure that Brother Vern wants to abscond with Little Lloyd's inheritance, and she will do everything in her power to make sure that that doesn't happen even if it means exhuming ol' Wesley Lloyd himself.

Not only questioning Little Lloyd's paternity, there is the collateral issue of the promiscuity of the child's mother's, Hazel Marie. Forget the fact that Hazel Marie and Wesley Lloyd carried on a ten-year illicit affair that produced the boy and that everyone in Abbottsville knew about--except Miss Julia. How would it look if Miss Julia had been duped by an already proven hussy?

Miss Julia enlists all her friends and even some of her enemies to help prove Brother Vern is a low-down snake in the grass.

Unfortunately, I think author Ross has hit the bottom of her creative barrel with Miss Julia Stands Her Ground. Miss Julia's housekeeper, Lillian, suffers a backslide into stereotypical African-American dialect, which was not evident in the first six books. While it was nice to read about snow and Christmas when the heat index is 115, approximately one-third of the novel is devoted to a flashback that would have fit more appropriately as a chapter in the first or second book.

Armchair Interviews says: This seventh book is more tales of Miss Julia.