Beloved Southern chronicler James Wilcox， with his rare blend of hilarity and compassion， is a novelist whose work has been featured in both Harold Bloom s The Western Canon and GQ s recent list of the forty-five best fiction books published in the last forty-five years. Tula Springs， Louisiana， first created by Wilcox two decades ago， is striving to find its foothold in a disarmingly modern world. So， for that matter， is Lou Jones-middle aged， sensitive， and gutsy-who lives in a $295，000 Cajun cabin and works as the receptionist at a fundamentalist health emporium in a defunct train station. It s the only job in town that doesn t require computer literacy and she earns three times what the state college paid her for teaching music theory. Soon the bemused Lou finds herself embroiled with the North American Bassoon Society， a gun-toting tax assessor， her maid s enigmatic polite-society mother， her laid-off husband s obsession with his childhood home， and the theft of a much-disputed ornate dresser. Heavenly Days is James Wilcox at his best， a gift to his longtime readers and to a whole generation of new ones.