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

Trending...

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.

More on The Californer

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."

More on The Californer

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