Carlisle Wainwright Cushing, of the old-moneyed Willow Creek, Texas, Wainwrights, is the daughter of larger-than-life Ridgely Wainwright . . . Cushing-Jameson-Lackley-Harper-Ogden. Given her mother's predilection for divorce, no one is surprised that Carlisle becomes a divorce lawyer and runs far away to Boston, where no one, including her fiance, knows she's an heiress. But now, three years later, Carlisle is lured back to Texas to deal with her mother's latest divorce and the family-sponsored 100th annual debutante ball which is on the verge of collapse.

Suddenly the determined lawyer is weighing the merits of beads versus crystals on ball gowns and teaching eighteen-year-olds to balance books on their heads, all the while trying to figure out how to tell her deeply Southern mother that she is engaged to a Yankee. Things go from bad to worse and soon Carlisle's afraid she'll never get back to Boston, especially when good ol' Southern boy Jack Blair shows up on the opposite side of the divorce court, making her wonder if the man is going after her mother in the proceedings, or her.

Carlisle's trip home challenges her sense of who she really is and forces her to face the secrets her family has tried to keep, well, secret. Funny and smart, poignant and true, The Ex-Debutante is a story about the risks one woman must take if she stands a chance of finding herself, real love, and her place in that crazy thing we call family.