Jan 2, 2026

What’s in a Name: Round Trip

One of my favorite things about the Magnolia Manor series isn’t just the stories themselves—it’s the titles.

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted each book’s name to feel like home. Something familiar. Something you might hear drifting across a porch on a warm evening, spoken with a knowing smile and just a hint of mischief. Southern sayings have a way of doing that. They’re lighthearted, expressive, and often carry far more meaning than the words alone suggest.

Each title in the Magnolia Manor series is built from a Southernism or bit of Southern slang—phrases that sound casual on the surface, but hint at deeper truths, tangled relationships, and the kind of drama that simmers just beneath polite conversation.

Round Trip: Leaving Home, Finding Wonder, and Always Coming Back Again

A “round trip” isn’t just a ticket…it’s a promise.

It means you’re going somewhere, yes, but it also means you’re coming back. In Southern terms, that matters. Leaving home is one thing. Returning to it, changed but intact, is another entirely. A round trip acknowledges adventure without abandonment, curiosity without betrayal. That’s why Round Trip fits so perfectly within the Magnolia Manor series.

Set in the late 1980s, this story captures a moment of long-delayed celebration. Maude Cooper, Opal Tyler, and Ruby Montgomery, better known as the Stone Sisters, are finally doing what they’ve talked about for years: traveling to New York City to celebrate their fiftieth birthdays. Fifty is a threshold age. Old enough to have lived. Young enough to still want more.

For women who have spent decades being dependable, sensible, and rooted in Rhinestone, New York represents something dazzlingly different. It’s noise and motion. Lights and anonymity. A place where no one knows who you’re supposed to be, and therefore can’t tell you you’re doing it wrong.

Round Trip revels in that freedom.

The Stone Sisters encounter new sights, unexpected adventures, and the intoxicating thrill of being somewhere that doesn’t know their history. For a brief time, they aren’t caretakers, rivals, or pillars of the community. They’re tourists. Explorers. Women allowed to marvel. But Magnolia Manor stories are never that simple.

Because of course, of course, Nadine Waters is also in New York City. Nadine, Maude’s lifelong rival, doesn’t fade politely into the background. She exists to challenge Maude’s patience, pride, and sense of fairness, and New York only amplifies that tension. The Big Apple may be vast, but rivalry has a way of shrinking any space it enters.

This is where Round Trip shines as a title with layered meaning.

It isn’t just about travel, it’s about collision. Old grudges running into new environments. Small-town history showing up uninvited in a big city that doesn’t care. It asks whether we can ever truly escape the people who know us best, or if they’re destined to appear whenever we least expect them.

And then there’s Ruby.

Because somewhere between sightseeing and celebration, Ruby finds herself onstage, dancing disco with a Cher impersonator, a moment that perfectly encapsulates what Round Trip is really about. Letting go. Saying yes. Stepping into joy without asking permission or worrying how it looks back home. The late ’80s setting matters here. This is an era of excess and expression, of boldness and spectacle. Disco may be fading, but its spirit lingers—inviting even the most reserved among us to take a risk, just once.

Yet beneath the humor and spectacle, a quiet urgency hums. Will the Stone Sisters make it back to Rhinestone in time to celebrate the town’s Centennial? That question underscores the emotional heartbeat of the story. No matter how far they roam, these women are tethered to home. To legacy. To the knowledge that their lives are interwoven with the place they’ll eventually return to—whether they’re ready or not.

A round trip changes you.
You leave with expectations.
You return with stories.

And Magnolia Manor understands this truth well: you don’t have to abandon who you are to be transformed. Sometimes all it takes is stepping far enough away to see your life clearly when you come back. Round Trip is a celebration of adventure without regret, rivalry without bitterness, and friendship sturdy enough to survive missed trains, unexpected encounters, and disco under stage lights.

Because no matter how far the Stone Sisters roam, they always find their way home.

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