Book Summary and Reviews of Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera

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Cathryn Conroy

Emotionally Searing and Difficult to Read, but It’s One of the Best Books I’ve Read
This is a story about the deep South. This is a story about the indelible bond and incredible courage of women. But most of all, this is a story about our shared humanity. This is a story that will stay with me for a long time.

Magnificently written by Deb Spera, this novel takes place in and near the swamps of South Carolina in the 1920s just after a boll weevil infestation destroyed the cotton crops and the livelihoods of countless people rich and poor. The book is written in the first person by three women:
--Annie is wife of a powerful man who has lost everything but quickly switches from growing cotton to tobacco on his plantation that still has empty slave cabins on the property.
--Gertrude is a poor, white woman with an abusive husband, four daughters, and no money.
--Retta is the black maid for Annie’s family. Happily married to Odell, the couple still grieve for the only child they lost when the little girl was eight years old.

The lives of these three women intersect in surprising ways, beginning when Retta rescues Gertrude and her daughters and takes them in, much to the disapproval of her black neighbors. But evil and dark, ugly secrets are lurking in the swamp and on the plantation, and when the three women figure out something so horrible, so wicked, so reprehensible, they have very different reactions as to how to tame it. Together, these women and mothers have a power they wouldn’t have alone.

The writing is brilliant with each woman’s voice so distinctive, so nuanced, so razor-sharp that the chapter headings listing the narrator’s name don’t even need to be there. You will know who it is by the style, which is quite a literary accomplishment.

Like the swamp around which the novel is set, this story will suck you in. The last third of the book is so compelling—actually, explosive—that it’s nearly impossible to stop reading. But the book is a tough one emotionally. The plot is unerring and relentless, exploring age-old taboos and physical abuse that hit me hard in the heart. Just know this going into it. A happy, carefree beach book it is not. Instead, it is emotionally searing. But isn’t that true of a lot of great works of literature?

This is an extraordinary book and one of the best I have read.

Sandi W

The lives of three southern women...
3.5 stars Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin for allowing me to read and review this book.

The lives of three southern women in the early 1920's. Unalike in class and standings, but with so many similar hardships. There was Anne, a wealthy aristocrat, blessed with all that money could buy. There was Rhetta, a black maid, a first generation free slave, still working for a white family. Then there was Gertrude, poor, white and beaten by her husband. This story is about how all three came to be connected, friends and in the end caregivers to each other.

Spera, a well known television producer, has now published her first, her debut novel. She admits to using many family stories and basing some of her characters off her own family members and also using some real life places and instances. This novel was developed from a short story that she wrote called 'Alligator'. We can only hope that she takes the rest of those short stories and make novels of each and every one.