Angels and Manners — Cynn Chadwick

It's not meant to be like this. Section 8 housing is for other people, not for Jen Manners, used to the suburbs and Junior League. But Jen's now divorced, she has her daughter Emily to support, and the only job she can secure is working as a checker in the local grocery store.

She's not the only one finding it difficult. Divorce has forced Carrie Angel into Section 8 housing too. She's got two teenage sons, Tex and Casper, and for them she's trying to do her best: she's an apprentice carpenter in a state-supported program. But it's hard and she's angry and that temper of hers is not something she can easily control. And that's one reason why her ex-husband Dill is fighting for custody of their sons. He might just win it too; it seems like Tex is getting more and more unmanly, and that's just gotta be Carrie's fault.

Slowly, the two women get to know each other, to trust each other, to be friends. Jen begins making sense of her new life. Then, into the store walks Georgia, a woman recently bereaved, and the confusion Jen had last felt as a teenager comes to grab hold of her again.

Angels and Manners shows us three women who have been tripped up by life but are determined to claw their way back. Not back to where they came from, though. These women have new lives to make.