AustLit

'Kathleen Lindley has honest brown hair, parted in the middle, because she finds symmetry soothing. Her mother, an overbearing woman, has hair like a steel trap. Kathleen's father, now long dead, was the receding type. Kathleen is well into adulthood before she finds the strength to escape her mother's clutches. She is thirty-two when she finally moves into a flat of her own, against her mother's will. But independence can bring loneliness, and her job managing the Curl Up'n'Dye hairdressing salon doesn't offer much opportunity for friendship. She and her mother are still tied together by the tragedy of her father, whose ghost is hard to dispel. Kathleen meets Jim, but her fragility and his carelessness make poor partners. When his attention starts to waver, she doesn't stop fate from providing its revenge. Clever and cut with black humour, Crowning Glory is about snarls, entanglements and letting down your hair.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.