A Real Southern Lady: Bobbie Lamont #3
by Zelmer Wilson · September 2023
Dear Reader,
Thank you for spending time with A Real Southern Lady.
Bobbie Lamont has always been one of those characters who refuse to fit neatly into the role the world has chosen for her. She is ambitious, stubborn, complicated, loving, and sometimes unsure of herself—even when she pretends otherwise. That is part of what made writing her story so meaningful to me.
At its heart, A Real Southern Lady is about the struggle between who we are expected to become and who we decide to become for ourselves. Bobbie was raised with a very particular idea of what a Southern lady should be, but her journey teaches her that tradition need not define identity. She can honor where she came from without allowing it to define every choice she makes.
This story is also about friendship, love, ambition, mistakes, and the courage it takes to begin again. Bobbie does not always make the right decisions, but she keeps moving forward, learning more about herself with every step.
One of the things I love most about the Black Springs Universe is that no character’s story truly exists alone. The people who pass through Bobbie’s life have stories of their own, and the choices made here continue to echo throughout the larger world.
I hope that somewhere in Bobbie’s journey, you recognize a little of yourself—the person you once were, the person others expected you to be, or the person you are still becoming.
Thank you for reading and for allowing Bobbie’s story to become part of yours.
— Zelmer Wilson
About A Real Southern Lady: Bobbie Lamont #3
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Bobbie Lamont knows exactly what people expect a Southern lady to be. Polite. Proper. Charming. Predictable. Bobbie has never been very good at any of that. In the early 1990s, she was determined to build a life that belonged to her—not to her family, her upbringing, or anyone else’s definition of who she should become. With one foot still tied to Birmingham and the other pulling her toward New York, Bobbie finds herself caught between the world that raised her and the future she wants for herself. New York offers freedom, ambition, and the chance to discover who she is beyond the expectations of home. It also brings complicated relationships, unexpected friendships, career challenges, and choices that force Bobbie to reconsider what independence really means. As the distance between her old life and her new one grows, Bobbie must decide which traditions are worth carrying with her—and which ones she is finally ready to leave behind. Set against Birmingham and New York in the early 1990s, A Real Southern Lady is a character-driven story about ambition, identity, friendship, love, and a young woman learning that becoming yourself sometimes means rewriting everything you were taught about who you were supposed to be. Bobbie Lamont may have been raised to be a Southern lady. She intends to decide for herself what that means.
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Zelmer Wilson (1975- ) was born in Fort Collins, Colorado. At the age of three, he moved with his family to Fort Smith, Arkansas. He would live there until he was eleven. In the summer of 1986, he left Arkansas and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, with his father and stepmother. During the summer of 1990, while visiting his mother and two sisters in Birmingham, Alabama, he discovered his calling in life to be a writer. His debut novel, In the Middle, is inspired by his own difficult teenage years in Phoenix, Arizona.
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