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Browne's Sweet Potato Queen advice books on love, divorce, and cooking have found a wide audience in readers who appreciate the Queens' sassy southern charm. With coauthor Gillespie, Browne turns to fiction for the first time to share lives and loves of the Queens. Jill, Mary Bennett, Patsy, and Gerald are united by their outsider status in high school. When Tammy, a beautiful but insecure redhead, moves into town and is humiliated by the in-crowd, Jill and company form the Tammy Club to bolster her spirits. The five enter the homecoming parade in wild dresses and red wigs, but a misprint on their sign (it reads Yammy instead of Tammy) leads to the five rechristening themselves the Sweet Potato Queens. The groups' friendships last for decades, despite distance and differences of opinion. Mary Bennett pursues fame on the coasts, Gerald comes to terms with his sexuality, and Tammy marries. But not everything is rosy. Mary Bennett finds success as a soap actress at the expense of the love of her life, Jill finds a man who proves too good to be true, and Tammy's insecurities lead to infidelities. Spirited and brazen, the Queens are good company.

About Jill Conner Brown

Jill Conner Browne exercises and runs constantly and is a weightlifting instructor at the YMCA in Jackson, Mississippi.  In addition, she writes for the Mississippi Business Journal using the pen  name, Betty Fulton.    In 1999, Jill Conner Browne, royal boss queen of Jackson, Mississippi's Sweet Potato Queens, introduced the queens  to the world in the hilarious  bestseller The Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love.  Her first book sold over 250,000 copies and had to go to press fourteen times.  The rage over the Queens started in the early 1980's--at least for Browne it did (Three Rivers Press).  Her followers didn't hop on the royal bandwagon until a decade later.  In 1982, she entered herself,  along with four of her friends, in the Jackson, Mississippi St. Paddy's Day Parade as THE Sweet Potato Queen.  They threw, yes, you guessed it, sweet potatoes to their not-so-adoring fans (Browne).  Later, fans came from across the country to grovel at the Queens' feet. And so the phenomenon came to be what it is today; what started from a little fun back in the 80's blossomed into a full-blown frenzy.  Browne keeps herself grounded by continuing to write her weekly humourous fitness column for the Clarion-Ledger, the newspaper of Jackson, Mississippi.  She also stays content with her family in Jackson, Mississippi,  which includes her daughter Bailey, her mother, three cats, and her dog (Three Rivers Press).

It is rumored that Browne is working on a third Sweet Potato Queen Book.  The contents of this one are highly confidential, but information has been released about the concept for the cover.  Expect to see more of the Queens than you ever have before when their butts are given the spotlight on the cover of her not yet titled new book (Dickerson).  Her books include The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love (Three Rivers Press, February,  1999) and God Save the Sweet Potato Queens (Three Rivers Press, January 2001).

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