A Novel by Ann MIller Hopkins

Family Trust is Ann Miller Hopkin’s second novel set in Alabama and Florida. A Large family bands together, pooling resources to elevate their golden years and live a far greater lifestyle together than any of the sisters and cousins could experience individually. An attorney and close companion of the extended family forms a family trust, which protects and enhances their last decades on this earth. The novel reveals love and companionship on a higher plane, one shared by the witty, fun-loving elderly.

In Family Trust, a mixed bag of love, laughter, and arguments over whether their favorite dance is the Carolina shag or the Birmingham bop keeps the reader laughing out loud! A rehab suicide, a hurricane, and a justified murder at sea add suspense and danger to a thought-provoking for a beautiful old age. Grown children present problems that bring cousins together to stand in the gap and eventually prepare the stage for another generation of family trusts. Jealously is always an element when beautiful women of any age are in the equation. A grocery store battle in the produce isleand a volunteer dog-bathing job in a rescue shelter could have been written for Lucille Ball.

And Ray, a Nashville singer and songwriter, famous for Don’t Make Cadillacs Like They Used To, is the youngest cousin to commit to the family trust. In her sixties, she writes Dancin’ to Heaven to tell the world to dance and sing everyday with the people they love. Surrounded by family who know each other better than anyone, the cousins and a few spouses enjoy a grand lifestyle via family pod living. Secure within the family, the aging cousins and siblings avoid dreaded assisted-living and retirement homes. Instead, they enjoy luxurious in-home day care. A sprawling gulf-front beach house flanked by walled gardens of fragrant herbs and orange trees is the setting renewal of childhood bonds, making the golden age golden. Family Trust is an easy read, thought-provoking, yet, for the most part, light-hearted. A great summer read that just might get you thinking.

Ann Miller Hopkins is the owner of Antiques on Holiday in Miramar Beach. Ann is a graduate of Auburn University with a diverse background in journalism, landscape painting and European Antiques. Her novels are fiction but there is never a shortage of familiar characters, conflicts and adventures, drawn from her own large quintessential Southern family. Mrs. Hopkins resides on the Gulf Coast with her husband. Five grandchildren add to the laughter that is a part of her life and writing.

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