Sisk (Honky-Tonks: Guide to Country Dancin' and Romancin') opens with a warm dedication and a note of thanks to the late country star Buck Owens.
In the subsequent 56 chapters, however, she paints a picture of Owens as a megalomaniacal, sex-addicted, song-stealing skinflint, likening him at times to a vampire, a man who once belittled a 10-year-old who played guitar for him. Owens was born in Texas in 1929, but made the migration west during the Depression, settling in Bakersfield, Calif., developing a distinct sound with songs like "Act Naturally" that consistently put him atop country music charts in the 1960s. A shrewd businessman, he later became widely known for cohosting the long-running TV show Hee Haw.

When May was a child, she was a lonely girl with a lazy eye and without any friends except a weird and ugly doll kept in a glass case given by her bizarre mother on her birthday.

Moving from L.A. to nowhere Minnesota, 16-year-old Katla Leblanc expected the local fashion scene to be frozen in time. What she didn't expect was induction into the Icelandic Stork Society, an ancient order of women charged with a unique mystical duty. Not only is Katla the youngest member, but Hulda, the society's omen-guided leader, immediately bestows the coveted Second Chair on her -a??a decision that ruffles a few feathers.