The Californer - New Book: Separated, Acting Badly by Barbara Flores. The Bad-Behavior-Mom Every Mother Will Love

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For fans of Elizabeth Berg (Open House), Elizabeth Bucher (Revenge of the Middle-age Woman) and Nora Ephron (Heartburn). This life-affirming memoir proves the bonds of family can survive even its most threatening challenges: infidelity, bi-cultural chasms, and Viagra.

LIVERMORE, Calif. - April 26, 2019 - Californer -- Barbara Flores, a successful designer and cookbook author, vows to keep her family and her thirty-year marriage intact. When her Latin lover professor husband dumps her for a younger woman, she plots an over-my-dead-body warpath against the interloper—a thirtyish Halle-Berry-look-alike. Barbara's obsession with getting her husband back and fixing her "over-therapied" family derail her principles and her mental health. Daughter Maya, a medical assistant with OCD, suggests the they "jump the skanky-ass-ho" and Barb comes close to it when she runs into her husband with his girlfriend at their Bay Area, Big O Tires and swoops down on the unsuspecting woman in a hair-pulling smack-down. Her own rage and bad behavior become hard to avoid especially when witnessed by eight-year-old granddaughter, Deanna, the family member she's trying to protect.

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Well meaning friends offer support but she's caught between her well-to-do suburban friends who egg her on to "forget that no-good cheater," and her dear Hispanic amigas who urge her to lure him back home with homemade enchiladas, rosary petitions, and if all else fails, witchcraft.

When Barbara's twenty-something son Miguel runs out of the house to teach his sister's abusive boyfriend, Jesse, a lesson, Barbara, a zen-reading professed pacifist, realizes she pushed her son into a dangerous street. Miguel can't back down. It's a matter of Latino family honor."

"Miguel whips past me on the lawn, disappearing into the night wearing only his boxers and wife beater, a lightning flash in his eyes. Oh God, help us. I did it. I unleashed it—the mania gene. Invincible. Grandiose. All-powerful. Knowing no fear. The gene I gave him. The gene, in times of war, that you hope is on your side. Jesse, being merely ADHD, is no match for bipolar."

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The story is simultaneously irreverent, funny, wise, and at times heartbreaking, yet for anyone who has experienced betrayal, abandonment, divorce, and BBS (Bad Mother Syndrome), Separated, Acting Badly is a reminder that, indeed, laughter is the best medicine.

REVIEWS
"…the wild events–hair-pulling fights between the two women–come alive on the page. The author's courage and unusual honesty result in a transformation where she shines through both as a woman and as a writer. Brava!" —Susan Cheever

".. full of life, and the results are vivacious, often hilarious, and never less than engaging." —Phillip Lopate

www.barbaraflores.net