• Read an Excerpt
• Reading Group Guide

If you have ever lived in a small town, be prepared to run into
some of your neighbors in Hubbard, Oregon, the setting for this
fresh first novel. If you haven’t, GOING TO BEND will give
you a marvelous peek into life in a community of fewer than 5,000
souls.

Rich in lush details, this great big slice-of-life story has
characters who may surprise you, especially in how much you care
about them. But there’s more than just a likable --- and
spunky --- cast. Diane Hammond’s prose sparkles with
wonderful sentences like, “Rose’s life was gliding by
in a lovely blur of good soup and purposeful days and warm
uncomplicated nights with Christie. A good life.”

Nadine and Gordon, a brother and sister team, move up from L.A. to
this tiny Pacific village. They want to escape the feverish rat
race that is the city. While planning to open Souperior’s, a
restaurant focusing on --- you guessed it --- soups, they hold a
contest for recipes. The grand-prize winner will be offered a job.
For Rose Bundy and Petie Coolbaugh, making soup has always been a
way to survive. Perpetually short on money, for them it meant the
difference between eating and going hungry. It is their recipe that
comes out on top and that lands them a job they split between them,
a job they sorely need. Now they find themselves humming along,
creating chowders, minestrones, purees and anything that involves
broths, veggies, meats and fish.

This may not sound like the makings of a great novel, but the
characters take over and live on these pages. Petie has a husband,
two kids about as opposite as salt and pepper, and childhood
baggage even her best friend knows nothing about. Rose lives alone
with her daughter, except for when the fishing boats dock for a
while and her fellow comes to stay for a few months.

Hubbard is a small town; everyone knows everyone --- and
everyone’s business. But the new business in town struggles.
Small towns don’t like newcomers. They carry a grudge against
outsiders. It will take Rose and Petie’s greatest effort to
keep themselves employed, which means keeping Souperior’s
running. Meanwhile, other star players, like Petie’s deadbeat
husband, are hanging out doing what townsfolk do: dropping by the
tavern, haggling for items automotive, and helping neighbors. And
there’s the inveterate ladies’ man, flashing his impish
grin and showing a side of himself even his insanely jealous wife
never knew existed.

The people are so real, I wondered how the author had come to know
some of the same people I did. She gave them heart. She gave them
flaws. They come with an attitude, and a lot of love. If this is
indeed a first novel, Diane Hammond is going to blow the socks off
the fiction world. This is a spectacular entry into the genre. The
glimpse into the lives of Rose Bundy and Petie Coolbaugh is so
authentic (right down to the “gargantuan pink wooden
butterflies with three-foot wingspans nailed to the siding”),
I could smell the soup.