Finalist Feature: I Know an Old Lady

Category: Adult Fiction

Description: It’s the summer of 1972, and Kansas wheat fields are baking under the relentless sun. Teenagers are celebrating the first taste of freedom as they line their pockets with newly printed driver’s licenses and long-awaited paychecks. Days off are spent at the town’s only lake, nights under the yellow lights of the drive-in restaurant.

But Billy Tupper’s life is a far cry from that of other teenagers. One mistake too many lands him in front of a judge who sentences him to a summer working for Old Lady Baxter, the victim of his latest carelessness… and the rumored child killer of Munroe, Kansas. As Billy sweats his way through endless months of mowing her lawn, weeding her garden, and painting her house, he also searches for the evidence to prove she’s guilty, but what he finds, and what he learns about himself, will change his life forever.

I Know an Old Lady is a touching coming-of-age story of loss and redemption, of understanding and compassion, and of a family torn apart and slowly put back together.

I Know an Old Lady
 is Billy Tupper’s story.

Author: Margaret Standafer lives and writes in the Minneapolis area with the support of her amazing husband and children and in spite of the lack of support from her ever-demanding, but lovable, Golden Retriever.

Margaret’s Local Library: Carver County Library

Winners will be announced at the 2021 Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference.