Sam Segretti is a drifter. At 25, he's been to six colleges in as
many years and worked as a "'mail carrier, factory drudge, mill
hunk, roofer, hospital orderly, and Chuckles the Clown, to name a
few.'" In a chance encounter at a West Virginia truck stop, Sam's
path crosses that of Frannie, another nomad (whose big feet, she
claims, are a sign that she is destined to be a wanderer, that ---
as she says --- "I'll find my truth through where my feet take
me.'"). Impulsive, reckless, impossibly quirky and breathtakingly
beautiful, Frannie bewitches Sam from the moment he first sees her,
and almost before he knows it, he has invited Frannie (a waitress
who has just been fired for flushing a potato down the men's room's
toilet) along on his travels.

The two land in the small town of Pineview, North Carolina, where
Frannie gets another waitressing job, and Sam works first at the
local furniture factory and later as a cab driver. As they
gradually become enmeshed in small-town life, Frannie and Sam also
learn more about each other, falling in love all the while. For
Sam, the desire to marry Frannie and settle down in one place is a
foreign feeling but one that he trusts implicitly, even as he
learns more about Frannie's troubling past, including her
schizophrenic brother and her propensity to leave boyfriends
abruptly without a trace. Frannie herself also exhibits some
unsettling tendencies --- what might pass for quirkiness might also
be signs of deeper instability. Frannie's odd fixations, her
periods of melancholy, her fear of commitment --- Sam is able to
overlook all these things because he loves Frannie, plain and
simple.

When the two finally marry and have a child, the extent of
Frannie's volatility becomes apparent. All Sam wants is to be with
Frannie, but how long will he be willing to chase after her? Is it
possible that the very thing that drew Sam to Frannie in the first
place will be the thing that finally drives him away?

RUNNING AWAY WITH FRANNIE, Renee Manfredi's second novel, is an
absorbing but at times painful read --- it's pretty clear from
early on in the book that this story will not have a happy ending.
Effervescent, delightfully drawn Frannie descends to a place no
one, not even Sam, can reach, and her journey there is not an easy
one. Sam and Frannie's story, though, will encourage re-reading and
a reconsidering of the many questions Manfredi raises, most
importantly, What are the limits of love? The nuances of this
question, which are explored by many of the characters in the
novel, make RUNNING AWAY WITH FRANNIE a great choice for book
discussion groups.

In addition to rooting for Sam and Frannie, readers will be
entertained by the many secondary characters whose eccentricities
Manfredi explores in true Southern style. There's O'Malley, the
crotchety old man waging a personal vendetta against Picasso;
Jimmy, the inept philanderer; and Sam's own mother, who
passive-aggressively delivers opinions of her children's friends
and lovers via the commemorative Elvis plate on which she serves
their dinners ("Love Me Tender" Elvis good, fat Graceland Elvis
very bad).

In the end, all these elements combine to make RUNNING AWAY WITH
FRANNIE rich, complicated, whimsical and tragic --- exactly like
Frannie herself.