{"product_id":"9780986520341","title":"The Magnificent Mary Ann","description":"Be careful about the advice you give: someone just might take it. \u003cp\u003eOn a two-hour airplane flight, road warrior Hal Dormund, half-delirious from jet-lag and meetings in eight countries, gave a rambling monologue of advice to a teary-eyed teenager - she would turn out to be a runaway -- who had sat down beside him. \"Find what you like best and work like hell at it,\" he said.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is now seven years later, and she has finally found him to thank him and say that she took his advice to heart. All of it: to Hal's amazement, Mary Ann recites whole passages of his monologue word for word. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat Mary Ann liked best was dance, and from the moment she got off the airplane, that is all she has done: train and train and train. And it has paid off: she is now the star of a Broadway dance production. It debuts just weeks after her reunion with Hal, and love and success embrace her for the first time in her life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd what a strange life. Having dedicated herself to dance, she is utterly innocent, knows nothing of the world, can scarcely distinguish between an ocean and a lake. Until she joined the dance company, nobody has ever treated her as more than a hired hand. Her family of Arkansas farmers didn't even search for her when she ran away. Until now.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow she is an PR embarrassment to her father, a TV preacher whose ministry is about to go national. And she is the leverage that a vile CEO is using in order to get out of paying Hal's company for a completed contract. \"You want to get cooperation?\" he tells Hal. \"Don't put your prisoner on the rack. Put his mother or his brother - or his girl.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut the central figure, shining amidst the circling black clouds of ambition, greed and jealousy, is Mary Ann: beautiful, robust, joyful, loving - in a word, magnificent. She is a jewel that the reader, like Hal, will never stop turning one way and another, delighting in every facet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Robert Buckland","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49827918741744,"sku":"9780986520341","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780986520341","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}