Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera
Three women in 1920s South Carolina tell their stories and form bonds, helping them weather difficult and disturbing circumstances.
Miss Annie (Mrs. Coles), whose father left her money her husband can't touch, runs her own business, The Sewing Circle, providing jobs for a number of the local women. She, too, grieves the loss of a child, as well as her estrangement from two daughters who left home abruptly 15 years ago and haven't been in contact since. Her husband...well he's another story. I'll let you hate him...I mean meet him...in the book.
Gertrude has a deadbeat, abusive husband and 4 young daughters who will soon starve if she can't find a way to provide for them. Her solution to the first part of that problem becomes clear in the opening line of the book "It's easier to kill a man than a gator, but it takes the same kind of wait." Desperate times...
The three women's lives intersect when Retta takes in Gertrude's very ill youngest girl to nurse her, then helps Gertrude find a place to live and to get work in Miss Annie's business. It's an uneasy situation with Retta's neighbours looking askance at her taking a white child into her home and moving a white family into their neighbourhood, but that will turn out to be the least of the complications in Rhetta's life.
At our book club meeting some of us felt it was hard to say we liked the book because of the disturbing subjects dealt with, but there is no question it is a good, maybe even great, book. Solid writing, strong characters, and a gripping plot all make it worth reading. Instances of spousal abuse, racism, child molestation, and murder don't overwhelm other themes of friendship, family relationships, and women standing up for women. Highly recommended.