Crazy Ladies, Michael Lee West's spirited first novel, explores the trials and tribulations of six Southern women---Miss Gussie, the reigning matriarch, her daughters, Dorothy and Clancy Jane, granddaughters Violet and Bitsy, and her irreplaceable maid and guardian angel, Queenie.

The story begins in 1932, in Crystal Falls, Tennessee, where Miss Gussie is struggling to adjust to life with her difficult baby daughter. When death darkens her doorstep, Miss Gussie pledges her husband to a lifetime of secrecy, a promise that she herself takes to the grave.

Miss Gussie has her hands full with her two daughters. As the girls grow older, the surprises begin. Dorothy, believing that money will heal her childhood wounds, marries the owner of the local five-and-dime and settles next door to her childhood home. Clancy Jane shocks everyone by running off with her high school sweetheart, who spends his time working on oilrigs and girls on the side. Eventually Clancy Jane's free spirit leads her far from home, while Dorothy free falls into obsessive self-absorption and dangerous paranoia.

Meanwhile, Miss Gussie's granddaughters have their own hardships to endure. Each woman, however, is ultimately guided back to the shelter of dear Queenie, where three generations of daughters are once again reunited in Miss Gussie¹s old home.

Interweaving dark calamity with remarkable insight and humor, each voice resounding with Southern cadence, Crazy Ladies is a novel full of love and laughter, pain and redemption.