Their lives' intertwine and connect throughout this mesmerizing story set on a plantation in South Carolina in 1924. Gertrude, Retta and Annie are three women from very different backgrounds. This book has earned top spot on my 2019 Favourites List - I loved every single thing about it! I received an advanced copy of this book from Park Row/ HARLEQUIN through NetGalley.ĥ outstanding stars for this brilliant debut novel! As always, it was wonderful to read this with my book buddies, Diane and Esil. I will definitely be looking to see what she writes next. While these three women are fictional characters, they were created with her grandmother and great grandmother in mind as well as her connections to this place in South Carolina. Rettie fast became one of my favorite literary characters with her strength, her goodness and what she does to help Gertrude and Annie. Retta is the daughter of a slave who works for Annie’s family and has lost a child as well. Annie, a businesswoman in her own right, the wife of a man has committed horrible secret deeds, mother of five children, one dead by suicide, two sons and two estranged daughters has to face the reasons for the estrangement.

She has to dig deep to do what it takes to feed her daughters, to save them and make a life for them. With a drunk for a husband, they live in squalor and they are starving. Gertrude is a battered wife and mother of four young daughters. Three points of view skillfully depicted. Spera introduces us to three women, each an unforgettable character in their own way. This is rural South Carolina in 1924, devastated by boll weevils, hurricanes, the depressive economic time that the South experienced even before the Great Depression, but there are other struggles. I don’t use the word atmospheric very often, but it’s hard to not describe this book in that way. “It’s easier to kill a man than a gator, but it takes the same kind of wait.” What a fantastic line and what an amazing debut novel. Once in a while the opening sentence of a story is enough for me to know that I’ll be taken with it.

Books by deb spera