Author Appearance: David Valdes Greenwood

The Rhinestone Sisterhood takes us deep into the world of small-town festival queens to capture the true story of four “sisters of the sash”—the Frog, Fur, Cotton, and Cattle Queens of Louisiana—and their quest to win the ultimate crown, Queen of Queens. Traveling across the state, David Valdes Greenwood introduces us to local queens with lives full of public speaking, pig chases, and pageant politics. We ride with the girls during their one-year reign, where families and boyfriends can be as complicated as judge’s panels, and a queen’s dreams may be at the mercy of a Category 4 hurricane.

High-spirited yet down-home, suspenseful and genuinely moving, The Rhinestone Sisterhood is, at heart, a story of female friendship and rivalry, of triumph and disappointment—not to mention a Frog Queen who just wouldn’t quit. Anyone who has ever wanted to be a princess will feel right at home.

About the author: David Valdes Greenwood is a lecturer at Tufts University and contributor to The Boston Globe Magazine. He is the author of two memoirs, Homo Domesticus and A Little Fruitcake.