Alabama, 1947. 

War's over, cherry-print dresses, parking above the city lights, swing dancing. 

Beautiful, seventeen-year-old Violet lives in a perfect world.
Everybody loves her. 

In 2012, she's still beautiful, charming, and surrounded by admirers. 


Veronica "Ronni" Johnson, licensed practical nurse and aspiring writer, meets the captivating Violet in the assisted living facility where Violet requires no assistance, just lots of male attention. When she dies, she leaves Ronni a very generous bequest―only if Ronni completes a book about her life within one year. As she's drawn into the world of young Violet, Ronni is mesmerized by life in a simpler time. It's an irresistible journey filled with revelations, some of them about men Ronni knew as octogenarians at Fairfield Springs.


Struggling, insecure, flailing at the keyboard, Ronni juggles her patients, a new boyfriend, and a Samsonite factory of emotional baggage as she tries to craft a manuscript before her deadline.

But then the secrets start to emerge, some of them in person. And they don't stop.

Everything changes.


Alternating chapters between Homecoming Queen Violet in 1947 and can't-quite-find-her-crown Ronni in the present, IT ALL COMES BACK TO YOU is book club fiction at its hilarious, warm, sad, outrageous, uplifting, and stunning best. In the tradition of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and Olive Kitteridge, Duke delivers an unforgettable elderly character to treasure and a young heroine to steal your heart.