Excerpt from The Roaring Days of Zora Lily by Noelle Salazar, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But Mama didn't like the clothes that were popular now and grumbled when we were asked to drop waistlines and raise hems.

"Indecent," she muttered as she sewed. "No corsets. Everything on display. What happened to modesty?"

How Rose thought I'd ever be able to sew something for myself with Mama constantly looking over my shoulder was beyond me. But I knew it wasn't just the style Mama hated, it was the new culture that had come along with it. Bawdy women making their own money and their own decisions, loud music (not that there was any heard in our house), and alcohol, despite Prohibition, that flowed day and night.

It was the alcohol in particular she didn't agree with. Ever since Daddy began stumbling in our door at odd hours after being who knows where, she'd grown increasingly hostile. I couldn't bring myself to tell her I wanted to go out.

"Come on, Z. Please?" Rose was pleading again. "Tell her you're staying over. You haven't done that in ages. Tell her it's for old times' sake. I have the night off and am watching the kids for my folks."

I chewed my lip. It could work.

"I promise it will be fun. And—" she lowered her voice further "—I can get us in to the back room at the Bucket."

"I don't even know what that is, Rose," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "It's a big deal, Z. That's what it is."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

"But you don't, because I can get us in."

She stopped talking then and stared at me, waiting for my final word.

"If I'm not at your house by seven I'm not coming," I said hurriedly.

She squealed and clapped her hands, then stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek as a pickup truck stopped in front of the house.

"Uh-oh. What are you two up to now?" my brother Tommy asked as he jumped out of the back and reached in to remove a small bunch of kindling for the kitchen cookstove.

He ran a hand through his wind-mussed dark hair, slapped the side of the vehicle, and waved as the driver gave me and Rose a grin before rumbling off down the street.

"Heya, Tommy," Rose said.

"Hey, Rosie. Saw your mother the other day when she came by the mill to bring your dad lunch. How you doin'?"

"I'm good. How's Jennie?"

Tommy grinned, a pink flush washing over his handsome face at the mention of his girlfriend.

"She's good, thanks."

He waved at her, swatted me on the arm as he walked by, and hurried into the house, rubbing at tired eyes as he went.

"He's so grown," Rose said.

"I know. I swear he's twice the size he was when he left college."

"He doin' okay with that?"

I shrugged and looked back at the door my brother had disappeared behind. Tommy was smart. All he'd wanted since he was a boy was to learn. He wanted to know everything. When he got a scholarship at the University of Washington, he was over the moon. But then Daddy got hurt and the bills needed to be paid, so he quit school to get a job at the same logging camp that had nearly taken our father's life.

"I catch him reading through his old textbooks whenever he comes home for a night. It's like he doesn't want to forget anything he learned in case he ever gets to go back."

"I feel for him," she said. "Logger life is rough, and Tommy has so much more in him than all that." She reached up to hug me, whispering in my ear as she did. "Seven o'clock?"

"If I'm not there—"

"You're not comin'. Got it."

"What did that girl want this time?" Mama asked as I sat back down beside her and picked up Eva's trousers.

"She has the night off and her folks are going out," I said, tying a knot and snipping the end of the thread. "She asked if I could stay over. Help out, have some girl talk. We haven't done that in ages."

"Girl talk?" I could feel her eyes on me.

I smiled over at her.

Excerpted from The Roaring Days of Zora Lily by Noelle Salazar. Copyright © 2023 by Noelle Salazar. Excerpted by permission of Mira Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.