Mr. and Mrs. American Pie

In the vein of Where'd You Go, Bernadette, this whip-smart romantic comedy is as incisive as it is funny-and refuses to be thwarted by convention. After getting dumped by her husband, a woman sets out to prove her worth by entering a 'best housewife' pageant in 1970 Palm Springs.

Juliet McDaniel came of age during a time when beauty pageants were rapidly becoming tacky relics of a far more sexist time, or so she thought. Although raised in Arizona, she spent the last 25 years living in Chicago, and knows its history and culture inside and out, so those places became a fitting home for her characters. Juliet has a B.A. in American Studies from Lake Forest College and a M.A. in Writing from DePaul University. She has had several screenplays optioned, and one produced: indie rom-com QWERTY, released in 2012. Mr. & Mrs. American Pie is her first novel.