Kathryn Stockett

Fiction 2026 | 646 pages

Kathryn Stockett is a wizard with characters.  Meg, Birdie, Frances, Charlie have such depth; such nuance; are so differentiated one from the other; wear their values on their sleeves; take action, each in their own profound way; love so differently.  She makes me  feel like I know each of them.  No, better than that, she makes me WANT to know them!  And then you add in her minor characters ... Esmerelda, Jack, Trixie and Dixie, Mrs. Tartt, Garnet Pittman ... and you have a roomful of people to invite over for homemade chocolate mouse and to spend the evening.  What great visualizing and creating Stockett can do!  

It is 1933 in Mississippi at the height of the Great Depression and Prohibition.  Many, both rich and poor, are living day-to-day on the margin. Meg, 11, is one if the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, who fights each day to keep her spirit.  The orphan's Director, Mrs. Pittman, really has it in for Meg. She isolated her in a mildewed room, gradually removing her "privileges" of eating meals with other girls snd attending classes.

Birdie jumps on a train to ask her sister Frances for some money to help tide her and her mother over,  Her sister Birdie has married well.  But not well enough to overcome the travails of the Depression. While there, she joins her sister in volunteering at the orphanage, meets and falls head-over-heels for Meg, trying to lift Meg's spirits and help her survive,

And Charlie, Meg's birth mom, is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood at a very difficult time in in the world with lots of social, political, and emotional toil and upheaval.

Eventually, after sending Frances and their mom away to live in Birdie's home for a while, and to find Frances' husband Rory who wit absconded with all the valuables in the house, seemingly to get some money, for himself.  Birdie gets it firmly in her mind to start a business, a Dime-a-Dance club. This is where Calamity Club gets a bit tedious, I think.  Stockett repeats herself A LOT in this section.  Even I know that Frances is the password, how and why to buy 99 widows, and what a mangle machine is.  The business is interesting, and many of our minor characters come to fruition in this section.  This ALMOST moved it a three-heart rating for me, but others found the business quite interesting, and it is, after all, a compelling venture. 

Eventually, the wrap up is believable, though I wish we saw more of Meg in the end.

I recommend it.  Yes, it is nearly 700 pages long. I recommend it for the fascinating characterizations and intriguing plot.

August 2026