Returning home is never easy and it’s even worse when the circumstances are tinged with controversy. Dacus, South Carolina is a small town with a powerful rumor machine that fuels the gossip about attorney, Avery Andrews, when she returns to her home town- minus the BMW and gainful employment. Finding clients isn’t easy, and mainly it’s the cases other lawyers don’t want, but her family is there to help, even formidable Aunt Letha. Of course her past is never far away and an old classmate, Donlee, has decided he’s in love with her and will stop at nothing to get her attention including staging fake suicides, and then there is the Sheriff who enjoyed bullying Avery when they were both young girls. Life in Dacus becomes a lot more complicated when a rusted Ford car with a dead body included is found at the bottom of the lake, and then one of the local businesses goes up in flames. In Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens, Avery finds herself in the middle of murder and mayhem as she simply tries to pick up the pieces and start over. This is the first book in A Southern Fried Mystery Series with three more additional books: Done Gone Wrong, Hog Wild, and Hush My Mouth.