Product Description

Will Billie Jean find true love and happiness?

All her life, Billie Jean Sloane, a charismatic, exquisite, small-town
beauty, has been desired and spoiled by men. At sixteen, following a
tragedy involving her first husband--"the love of her life"--she is
heartbroken. Unable to forgive or forget, her parents take drastic
measures to keep them apart. --- The vain, yet innocent, Billie Jean--one
of seven siblings--is swept from her humble beginnings at 1106 Grand
Boulevard in the Midwestern town of Hamilton, Ohio to a luxurious
life-style in Phoenix, Arizona and other fascinating locales... through a
World War II marriage and a Mafia scare in Sacramento, California... to
vicious seduction at Lake Tahoe... to the fabulous wealth of the "San
Francisco Sinclairs," real estate and jewelry tycoons. Then back to her
hometown to search for her first husband. --- This story takes you through
Billie Jean's seven marriages and sixty-four years--1933 to 1997--of
happiness and tragedy. Always searching for her first love and her
childhood, the enchanting child/woman captivates many men along the way,
each wealthier than the one before ... each sending her scurrying back to
1106 Grand Boulevard, a trail of broken hearts in her wake. --- 1106 Grand
Boulevard is the story of passions that last a lifetime; of family love and
betrayal; of spousal abuse and sadistic child abuse; a story of Billie
Jean's desperate search for happiness, self-worth, and maturity ... a story
of people needing people and people using people.

Product Details

• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

David E. Meadows, best-selling author, current series is Dark Pacific
"Edge-of-your-seat suspense. Dravis grabs the reader up front. A
pageturner story that tugs the emotional heart strings."

Katherine A. Becker, Hamilton, Ohio City Councilperson
"Betty Dravis is a dynamic writer! It was hard for me to put this
book down!"

Brenda Cooper, LOS GATOS DAILY NEWS
"Betty Dravis announces her third novel on NBC/KNTV's Bay Area
Vista show, hosted by Janice Edwards. ..."

Customer Reviews

An Unpretentious, Wildly Entertaining Tale of Love's Demands and Consequences
1106 GRAND BOULEVARD is a tough book to classify and giving it a rating in numbers of stars is yet more difficult. Usually 5 stars indicates a masterpiece of literature, one of the great novels, one of the books destined to climb to the top of the best selling list, or some other dubious notch on the ladder. But Betty Dravis has written an engrossing book about middle America and the foibles and kinks and bonds of the big family, bound together by secrets and by familial love of the unconditional type, and in doing so she has elected to tell her story in the language appropriate to the family. This novel is not overflowing with metaphors and waxing eloquent: Dravis writes with constrained Midwest vocabulary even as her huge cast of characters travels the continent and eventually the world. Her strict reliance on this style pulls the story along with a credibility sense that keeps it real. It is a feat, a writer's decision, and it works. And as such it deserves 5 stars.

To relate the story in a brief synopsis would be impossible, so rapid fire are the incidents, so changing the characters, so extensive the time from 1933 to 1997. The story begins in Hamilton, Ohio where the address of the title is the home of the Sloane family. The eldest daughter Billie Jean is a bombshell and a hedonist and marries Cal at sixteen only to be abused and eventually shot by him. Pregnant and a disappointment to her family she moves to Arizona where her Aunt Tommie begins her 'education' about managing men. And manage them she does, going through seven marriages and countless boyfriends as she makes her way through life struggling with her perceived lack of her mother's love and respect and her desperate longing for her original love, Cal. Along the way she grows up and relates to her large family of brothers and sisters in meaningful encounters, only to ultimately learn the etiology and lessons of her lifelong reaction to men and her desperate need to feel the love of her mother. The story shifts from secrets to disasters to hopes crushed by deaths to wild nights and incidents that would destroy a lesser heroine than the impossible not to love Billie Jean.

Dravis is able to create characters with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of response from her heroine's experiences. There is never a dull moment or a gaping hole in the narrative. There are problems with electing to write in the vernacular that I am sure Dravis weighed carefully: phrases like 'Lordy', 'Honey', and repeated familial epithets tend to drone the reader and the use of a drawing of a face at the beginning of each chapter that tends to give the appearance of a running magazine serial instead of a novel. These are quibbles. The task or goal of a storyteller is to capture the attention of the reader and hold the reader 'hostage' until the final page. Dravis is a past master in this. The adventures of Billie Jean Sloane-Taylor-McIvers-Hollings-Parsons-Sinclair-etc... make for a wild ride and a good read. Grady Harp, July 06

Best true-to-life love story ... with lots of action!
This is the most real-to-life love story I've ever read. But it should be billed as a love/thriller because it's got lots of action. As a stunt double that's what I like--ACTION!

Love the strong (yet vulnerable) heroine!

That nostalgic-appearing home on the cover drew me like a magnet. Reminded my of my own childhood home back in Georgia.

The house drew me, but the Sloane family and the unpredictable Billie Jean kept me reading! What a story! What an author!

This book lives up to its hype! It delivers a thrill a minute! I couldn't read it fast enough!
I've been a fan of this author since reading her debut novel, Millennium Babe: The Prophecy in 2001. Then when she wrote a kids book, The Toonies Invade Silicon Valley, I ran right out and bought that one for my niece and nephew. Both are great books.

I'm not big on reading romances, so thought I might pass this book by. But then when I read the pre-reviews by such well-known, respected people (see the Amazon Editorial Reviews above) and the short synopsis on this page, I realized it's not a typical romance ... more of an epic love story, a family saga.

So Dravis reeled me in again ... and am I ever glad she did. It's a fabulous reading adventure. Spending time with the Sloane family is a treat I would not have missed for anything!

To make a long story short, I ordered it before it was released and received it a few days ago. I read it in two settings, and hated to put it down the first time, but I had to go to work. It's a real pageturner, just as Author David Meadows wrote in his review on the book's cover.

Poor Billie Jean sure managed to get into a lot of trouble; some caused by her innocence, others by bad judgment, but all exciting, adventurous, and at times, laughable. What an exciting life she led. My heart went out to her on occasions, and at other times I rejoiced with her. (I often wanted to slap some sense into her, also, just like her sister wanted to do so often in the book.)

It's a rags-to-riches story, in a way, but it's much more than that! The way this author blends the true facts of their family background and their childhood into this fictitious story is nothing short of spectacular.

I love that old home of theirs. ... Even the address--1106 Grand Boulevard--rolls off the tongue like a taste of honey. I can see why Billie Jean hurried back home between broken marriages ... not only for that house, but for her loving family. Despite problems with her mother, her mother loved her dearly.

And Mr. Sloane was quite a father, too ... with a big heart and a fine sense of humor. And all those siblings! Lucky author to have such a large, caring family.

This story has everything ... adventure, romance, mystery, suspense, family love, sibling rivalry, etc. And above all, it has plenty of thrills.

Very well-written. A delight to read. It drips with such nostalgia, it makes me long for my own childhood back in Indiana.

And from that extraordinary foreword written by the author's real-life "first date" and the vignettes of her journalism career sprinkled throughout the book, it sounds like her life would make an exciting book, also.

Any plans for that, Ms. Dravis? I would be first in line to buy your life story. Whether you write it as highly-dramatized fiction--like this book--or nonfiction, that should be a whopper! (I'm really curious about your interview with the living legend, Clint Eastwood. The details of how you met Dale Robertson, Jane Russell, Ted Kennedy, and other celebrities would be interesting too.) Hmmmmmm ...