Where would we be without friendship? I’ve often pondered that question and my answer is this-a big fat nowhere! One of the underlying themes in Saving CeeCee Honeycutt is the importance of cultivating and maintaining meaningful friendships in our lives. I think friends are the diamonds in life and I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for the uplifting friendships I’ve enjoyed. Along with the issues of mother/daughter relationships, loss, anger, and forgiveness, I wanted to explore friendship in my novel. But I wanted to do it in a surprising way. CeeCee lives the first 12 years of her life trying to hide from the curious stares and snickers of neighbors and the hurtful teasing from her classmates. But with a psychotic mother who parades around town wearing a tattered old prom dress and a tiara, it’s impossible. Early in life CeeCee develops a strong friendship with an elderly neighbor woman who is her only confidante. It is this one friendship that gives CeeCee ballast. But when tragedy strikes, CeeCee must leave her only friend when she is sent to live in Savannah with a distant relative she’s never even met by the name of Tootie Caldwell. As…