March 15, 2019
In South Carolina in the 1920s, three memorable women struggle with challenging family relationships amid the depths of the Depression in this impressive first novel.Spera's debut weaves together the stories of Annie Coles, matriarch of a white, plantation-owning family; Oretta Bootles, Annie's black housekeeper; and Gertrude Pardee, a young white woman who has fled a brutally abusive husband and their isolated, ramshackle home. The trio comes together in the small town of Branchville; one thing they have in common is fraught relationships with their daughters. Annie has been estranged for 15 years from her two adult daughters, for reasons only slowly revealed. Retta still grieves for her only child, a beloved girl who died at age 8. Gertrude is trying simply to keep her four young girls alive, given their grinding poverty, and away from their father and, in the case of the older daughters, from lusty boys. The first-person narration alternates among the three main characters, and Spera deftly creates distinctive voices for each one. The novel is rich with details about the hard physical work and emotional resilience demanded of women in the rural South almost a hundred years ago. It also makes no bones about marriage in that time. As Retta says, "When a woman marries and takes her husband's name she is forever bound by his action and not her own. It ain't right, but that's the way it is." Retta has a warm and loving marriage despite the fact her husband was badly injured in a work accident. Gertrude and Annie are not so lucky; each of them must reckon with husbands capable of terrible things. The novel's plot can sometimes veer toward melodrama and even overload, as when a raging diphtheria epidemic, the revelation of a criminal secret, and a hurricane all happen at once. But Spera's sure-footed depictions of women's friendships and mother-daughter relationships are the book's strengths.A story of strong women pushed to extremes succeeds with convincing characters and a vivid portrait of the rural South a century ago.
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May 1, 2019
Television producer Spera sets her first novel in 1924 in rural South Carolina, which has just been devastated by a boll weevil infestation, leading Cole family patriarch Edwin to turn his attention from cotton to tobacco. Spera's tale centers around three women whose fortunes are linked with the Cole plantation: Edwin's wife, Annie, who tries to reconcile her fraught family, from her stuttering son, Lonnie, to her two estranged daughters. Next is Oretta Bootles, whose mother was a slave on the Coles' plantation, and who has been Annie's maid since her children were young. Her marriage to Odell is passionate but tinged with sorrow from the loss of their only daughter. The third is Gertrude Pardee, who has committed an unspeakable act to save herself and her four daughters, and who seeks employment with the Coles as well as a safe haven. The three women's fortunes become intertwined and a long-kept secret threatens all of their futures. Richly rendered and engrossing, Spera's debut is a powerful look at the lives of women in the early twentieth-century Deep South.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
June 1, 2019
DEBUT Three women from different backgrounds struggle to survive in 1924 South Carolina. Boll weevils obliterated the cotton crops, causing the South's economic devastation. Gertrude Pardee suffers through each day in the swamp, trying to evade her drunk husband's fists while scrounging up what little food there is to keep her four girls alive. Spiritually gifted Retta Bootles manages everything domestic on the plantation where her enslaved ancestors lived. Times are different, but she must still maintain a balance with members of the household. Annie Coles is the matriarch of the plantation who dreams of her family being whole again. After the suicide of her 12-year-old son, she kept sane by opening the Sewing Circle, a business that employs local women desperate for jobs. These women find they have much in common. When the decades-old Coles family secret is finally discovered, Gertrude, Retta, and Annie will risk everything to keep their children safe. VERDICT Lovers of historical Southern fiction and gritty female characters will feel as if they are living in the desperation of these families, then rallying behind these courageous women as they fight for justice. [See Prepub Alert, 12/3/18.]--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX
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