G.A. Anderson
“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
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
In the coastal town of Dufferin Beach, Katy Kiss is searching for the hope she had as a child, when her immigrant grandmother pinched her cheeks and promised a lifetime of “Happily”.
At twenty-six, that happily is nowhere to be found. Katy is stuck working in her family’s Hungarian restaurant, and her marriage feels like it’s been churned through the business end of a meat grinder.
Taking her best friend’s advice, Katy tries therapy where she scores zero for effort, eight for avoidance, and ten out of ten for having the attention span of a small rodent. But she’s about to get a divorce, her life is unraveling, and she’s forced to explore the dreaded topic her family won’t go near.
Emotion.
As the stress of her situation builds, Katy longs for the support of her parents, but her dad is misbehaving in a foreign country, and her indignant mother is holed up in Paris. All they’ve left behind is a mysterious document she wasn’t meant to find.
When a late-night call wakes her from a haunting dream, the secrets about that document begin coming out. She’ll need her passport, her closest friends, and her annoying therapist to see her through the calamities, both domestic and international.
If candor and snark can save her from herself, Katy might discover the truth hiding between the lies, and find the happily she’s been searching for.