Eleanor Grigson thought she’d have life figured out by now. Instead, she’s widowed, depressed, and overwhelmed by a secret she’s spent years hiding. Her late husband was a hoarder—and the crumbling Savannah house he left behind is packed to the rafters with the evidence.
Then her son Billy arrives from Silicon Valley for what he claims is a short visit. He hires contractors and enlists a home organizer, determined to impose order on the house, and on his mother’s life. Eleanor bristles at his intervention and resists the overhaul he seems so eager to force upon her. But as rooms are emptied, she begins to suspect that Billy’s fixation on her is really about outrunning his own disappointments—and the lonely, carefully engineered life he’s built out West…
Welcome to the official website of Siggy Patton, author of character-driven contemporary fiction, including Eleanor Grigson Cleans the House.
Tender and offbeat, Francis & the Women is a coming-of-age story about belonging, reinvention, and the courage it takes to claim your own story.
Francis has spent his life under the control of his overbearing Aunties, in a small hometown that made up its mind about him long ago. Sheltered and underestimated, he has few companions beyond his faithful dog, the Violent Labrador. Then he meets Carmenita.
A college student with dreams of becoming a jazz singer like Billie Holiday, Carmenita sees something in Francis no one else ever has. Around the same time, he lands a job at a struggling car lot, where his quiet attentiveness—honed over years in the company of older women—puts the dealership’s aging customers at ease…