“With her trademark charm and a pithy view of the world, G.A. Anderson invites us into the life of Katy Kiss, achieving a delicate balance of humor and hard reality as she struggles through a tumultuous divorce, the revelations of therapy and the heartbreak of loving imperfectly. South of Happily is raw, funny, scary, warmly reassuring, and profoundly moving. Fans of the smartly layered family dramas of Camille Pagan and Kerry Lonsdale will find a new favorite!”
Kimberly Brock, award winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare
Once in a while, an author comes along with a singular voice and makes every description and interaction on the page a pleasure to read. Anderson so completely captures the quirky, hilarious, and lovably flawed Katy Kiss that I'd know her if she passed me on the street. An amazing talent, and I hear a sequel is in the works, so get ready for more of this vibrant creation!
-George Weinstein, author of Hardscrabble Road & Return to Hardscrabble Road and many other books
Unlike most women's fiction, South of Happily goes beyond the usual themes of marriage, divorce, and family history. We get down to the heart of who is Katy Kiss, an astute young woman caught in the maelstrom of betrayal, grief and self-doubt. What is remarkable is how much humor, friendship and exotic travel keeps this story aloft, never mired in the cynicism and often surprisingly tender.
- Author Lizbeth Leigh Jones - Ulterior Motives
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G.A. Anderson
G.A. Anderson is a first-generation Hungarian-Canadian, born in Montreal, Quebec. After living in Paris for a few years, her family moved to the U.S. where she has lived ever since.
She is married and has two amazing daughters, and many (many) animals from the local shelters.
She began writing when friends and family on the receiving end of her emails told her she was “weird but funny”. The feedback compelled her to write, entertain and make people laugh.
Gaby has worked in the restaurant industry, commercial and group travel, private aviation, and pharmaceutical instrumentation. She currently works in behavioral health management.
Her husband calls her a Renaissance Woman with mad-skills.
This means she can catch a softball with one hand while holding a giant turkey leg with the other.
SOUTH OF HAPPILY
Two years into the marriage from hell, Katy Kiss is still South—still short of Happily. Her husband is pretty on the surface, but what lies beneath is quickly deteriorating.
She had a bad feeling while they were dating, but like a hundred times before, she squashed her gut instinct under the weight of wanting to be a normal American girl instead of the weird daughter of Hungarian immigrants. Her plan to assimilate via Florida beach bum isn’t working and she’s about to learn that getting into a lousy marriage is easy. Getting out…not so much.
Taking her lawyer’s “gentle” advice, Katy begins therapy where she scores zero for effort, eight for avoidance, and ten out of ten for having the attention span of a gerbil. But her world is unraveling, and she’s forced to explore the dreaded topics her European family shuns. Their history and emotion. Any emotion.
As the stress of her separation builds, Katy gets a late night call that puts her life on hold and sends her scrambling to the far ends of the earth. Something unimaginable is happening, and it’s going to throw open the floodgates to all those repressed emotions—and to the secrets locked tight inside the Kiss Family closet.
Katy will need her passport and her closest friends to see her through the calamities, both domestic and international. If candor and snark can save her from herself, she might discover the truth hiding between the lies and find the Happily she’s been searching for.
