Hello and welcome, once again, to our ten-week slow read of the first book in the Darling Dahlias series. This week, we are reading Chapter 24, the section “Makin’ Do” and the recipes. In case you missed a week or two, you can find the full reading schedule here, with links to my author commentary on the readings—and our discussions—for Week One through Week Nine. This book is widely available in libraries, bookstores, and online bookstores, in print (new and used), digital, and audio. Some readers tell me that audio isn’t the best experience for a slow read, because it’s difficult to return to passages that you want to think about and comment on. But it’s also easily available, and Peggity Price, the narrator for this series, is exceptionally good.
Thanks for being here! And now, on to Week Ten!
The mysteries with legal consequences—the murder of Bunny Scott, the disappearance of money from the Darling bank, and Mr. Johnson’s questionable family loans—have been cleared up (Chapter 23). The Limas have returned from their “second honeymoon,” and Mrs. Lima has hired a respectable replacement for Bunny. Nadine Tillman writes home to ask her mother for money, and the elusive Maxwell Woodburn turns out to be Bunny’s pen pal. He’s actually in prison and can’t marry anybody until his release (Chapter 24).
The last mystery belongs to Bessie Bloodworth’s ghost. The cloaked figure with the shovel was no ghost at all but Beatty Blackstone, who had discovered an old letter saying that Cornelia Cartwright had buried the family silver under the cucumber tree. Beatty, hoping to find the treasure, injured himself during his nighttime digging and eventually gave himself away while delirious at Doc Roberts’ office. At the Dahlias’ Sunday meeting, the story comes out just as the club is worrying over the leaking roof and the lack of money to repair it.
Then, while planting their new sign beneath the cucumber tree in front of the Blackstone house, the women strike a buried box. Inside are the long-lost Cartwright silver, jewelry, and ten twenty-dollar gold pieces. The treasure Beatty failed to find has come into the Dahlias’ grateful hands, and just when they needed it most.
“It’s Cornelia’s legacy,” Bessie said in a reverential tone. “Right where she said it was. Under the cucumber tree.”
“It’s Magnolia acuminata,” Miss Rogers said sharply.
“It’s our roof,” Aunt Hetty Little said happily. “Glory be, it’s our roof!”
This section represents just a few of the strategies many women adopted in their efforts to stretch their resources while they kept food on the table and clothes and shoes on the kids. Community cookbooks and small-town newspapers of the period are full of readers’ suggestions for coping with scarcity.
This book was written in 2008-2009, a time when many people were out of work and still had bills to pay. You may remember the local clubs, church guilds, and online groups that traded “makin’ do” suggestions for cutting expenses and doing more with less. I wanted to emphasize the parallels between the 1930s and the difficult times people were living in.
One of the things I enjoy most about writing small-town historical mysteries is the creation of the world around the characters and the town, and placing both the characters and their town within the historical setting of their era. In the case of the Depression era, that world involves the local, state, and national economy, as well as the machinations of various political figures, at the local, state, national, and international level. Each of the ten books in the series gives us an evolving way to look at what happens and what it means to the people in Darling. You can see some of that in the descriptions of the books. (These were prepared for marketing/advertising, so they’re full of plot teasers with a strong sales flavor.)
It’s the first full year of the Great Depression and Washington seems incapable of coping with the economic disaster that began with Black Tuesday, the 1929 stock market crash. Prohibition has led to the rise of crime lords, and their influence threatens to spill over into America’s small towns. But the Dahlias—members of the local garden club—manage to find sunny spots in the lengthening shadows. Meet the club members, discover how their Southern town is shaped by its history, and learn the ways they’ve found to cope with hard times.
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. May, 1930. The Dahlias have just inherited a new clubhouse—and with it a mystery. Other mysteries are troubling them, too. What’s happened to Bunny Scott? What’s going on at the bank? Where is the escaped convict—is he a threat? And what’s this about a ghost? Join Lizzy, Verna, Ophelia, and Myra May as they set out to solve these puzzles.
The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies. November, 1930. The hometown ladies (Liz, Verna, Bessie, and Myra May) meet Miss Lorelei LaMotte, the famous Ziegfeld Frolics dancer, and a mysterious man from Cicero, Illinois, the hometown of Al Capone. It looks like big-city crime has invaded dear little Darling—and that even the indomitable Dahlias can’t stop it!
The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose. May, 1931. The Dahlias are at it again, trying to solve a whole bouquet of mysteries. Verna’s in a terrible jam over money missing from the county treasury, Beulah must find out why Angelina Biggs’ hair is falling out, and Bessie is trying to solve the puzzle of Miss Rogers’ real identity: Who was the (real!) Confederate Rose and what does she have to do with the Dahlias?
Franklin D. Roosevelt wins the 1932 election and starts to implement big national changes that affect even small towns. In Darling, the Savings and Trust is in serious trouble and the town considers a scheme for printing its own currency to tide them over until money is available again. There are even more changes when the Civilian Conservation Corps builds a camp nearby, giving a boost to the town but bringing trouble, too. Darling folk find their lives turned upside-down by the arrival of an air show and a female pilot, the possibility of new jobs for some of the Dahlias, and even by the weather, when a hurricane comes to town.
The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star. July, 1932. The Texas Star herself—Miss Lily Dare, famous aviatrix and the “fastest woman in the world”—is bringing her Dare Devils Flying Circus to Darling. Unfortunately, she’s also bringing a whole lot of trouble. While the Dahlias prepare for the annual Watermelon Festival—where they will present the famous female aviatrix with her own Texas Star hibiscus—rumors are...well, flying.
The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush. It’s May, 1933 and Darling is trying to cope with the big threat to its little bank and to a vitally important local cottage industry, moonshine. Meanwhile, troubles of the heart plague Verna Tidwell and Liz Lacy. There’ll be no pennies from heaven, but if anyone can balance things out, folks can bank on the Darling Dahlias.
The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O’Clock Lady. June, 1934. The Eleven O’Clock Lady ain’t no lady—at least, that’s what Sheriff Buddy Norris and the Darling Dahlias fear. When she’s found strangled, the roots of the matter seem to twist around everything else in Darling, threatening the uneasy relationship between the town and the new CCC camp. And things aren’t made any easier when a hurricane blows into Darling.
FDR’s New Deal is making a difference in the lives of Americans, but not fast enough, according to populist Senator Huey P. Long. From Germany and Italy come unsettling reports of the rise of strongman rule. Prohibition is over, but moonshine is here to stay, with all the problems it creates. In Darling, everyone knows that it’s time for new ideas and modernization, especially where the Telephone Exchange, the Savings and Trust, and the Darling Dispatch are concerned. The Dahlias cope with change by planting their gardens, while the Federal Writers’ Project brings new opportunity.
The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover. October, 1934. When the Lucky Four Clovers run into a string of bad luck, it looks like the music may have ended for Darling’s favorite barbershop quartet. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn’t. And as Sheriff Buddy Norris discovers when he confronts Cypress County’s most notorious bootlegger, it helps to have a little luck in your pocket.
The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle. December, 1934. It’s Christmas, and Darling, Alabama, is unwrapping a package of Christmas puzzles. Will the new bakery survive? Will Charlie Dickens learn his wife’s secret? Will Sheriff Norris find out what’s brewing at the prison farm and pull the plug on that corruption? But Darling folk have courage, respect their neighbors, and dream of doing their best. There’s nothing puzzling about that!
The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily. Spring, 1935, finds the little Alabama town of Darling excited about their new local radio station, WDAR—and about what happened at the Magnolia Manor. And if that’s not enough to keep the tongues wagging, there’s more. Will the ladies at the new bakery ever learn to bake bread? What’s happening in Liz Lacy’s love life? And can Voodoo Lil’s special brand of magic keep Violet Sims from taking Cupcake off to Hollywood to become a Shirley Temple look-alike?
The Darling Dahlias and the Red Hot Poker. September, 1935. It’s Labor Day weekend and the Darling Dahlias are trying to keep their cool at the end of a sizzling summer. This isn’t easy, though, since there’s a firebug on the loose in Darling. He—or she!—strikes without apparent rhyme or reason, and things have gotten to the point where nobody feels safe. What’s more, firebrand Senator Huey Long is scheduled to come to town on what looks suspiciously like a campaign tour preparing for a presidential bid. Is he actually going to challenge FDR for the 1936 Democratic nomination?
Over the course of the series, Darling changes—but it changes in the way small towns often do: slowly, unevenly, and through the daily choices of people who are trying to get by. The first book begins with inheritance: the Dahlias receive a clubhouse, two cucumber trees, a ghost story, and a set of mysteries that are tangled up with money, reputation, family secrets, and the hard new realities of 1930. By the end of the book, the women have not merely solved puzzles. They have claimed a place for themselves and discovered that the past, when it is brought into the light of the present, can become a resource for the future.
That pattern continues through the books that follow. Each mystery belongs to Darling, but each also opens a window onto the larger world of the Depression years: Al Capone and the rackets, Prohibition and moonshine, bank failures, the New Deal, Huey Long’s populism, the CCC, women’s work, radio, aviation, newspapers, changing technology, and the ominous news from Europe. The Dahlias don’t stand outside history, watching it happen. They live inside it, through gardens, kitchens, offices, boarding houses, shops, churches, courtrooms, and the town’s endlessly active grapevine.
What holds the series together, I think, is the women’s practical intelligence. They make do, but they also make community. They notice what others overlook, ask questions that respectable people would rather avoid, and keep one another going when money is short, tempers are frayed, and the future looks anything but secure. The mysteries matter, of course. But so does the larger question the series keeps asking: how do ordinary people create courage, usefulness, and even pleasure in difficult times?
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree, the first book in the Dahlias series, was written in 2008 and published in 2009, in the teeth of the Great Recession. That book and the next five (Parts 1-2 of the series) were published by Penguin/Berkley, under its Prime Crime imprint, 2009-2015. (As usual, the audio was published separately.) Like all of my series work, these were published under three-book contracts.
But when it came time to write a proposal for the next three Dahlias books (seven, eight, nine), I had already created my own independent imprint, Persevero Press. In Latin, the phrase means I persist, a motto I adopted for myself in graduate school, five decades before Mitch McConnell’s unforgettable charge against Elizabeth Warren, “Nevertheless, she persisted.” In fact, by 2013, I had already written and published the first of my Hidden Women series, A Wilder Rose (2012), and had plans for at least two more women’s biographical novels (Loving Eleanor and The General’s Women). I still had a couple of China Bayles books under contract with Berkley, but 2013 seemed to be a good year to make the Dahlias independent.
So I published all four of the books in Part 3 of the Dahlias series independently, with my own editorial team. Becoming a publisher gave me a much more comprehensive understanding of the larger book world. I loved the process of learning and implementing the new publishing technologies and felt much more in control of my calendar and commitments—important to me, because by that time I was in my seventies and couldn’t count on being able to meet publishing deadlines. Independent publishing isn’t for everyone, even in (or maybe especially in) the new AI era. But it has worked for me. I am very proud of the dozen and a half books I’ve published with Persevero Press.
Elizabeth Warren persisted. So did the Dahlias, as well as the remarkable Hidden Women and China Bayles, Ruby, and their friends. I know you’re making a habit of it, too.
There is one important plot thread left untied at the end of the series: Will Lizzy marry Bent Moseley or pursue a different kind of life, perhaps even outside of Darling? I left the question open because neither Lizzy nor I could decide. What about you? What future do you imagine for Lizzy? If you’ve read the series, what do you think she’ll do?
Do you enjoy series books? If so, what draws you to them? Do you read them for character, setting, continuity, comfort, mystery—or something else? How are they different from standalones?
If you had been writing Book 11, what might you have done with it? Can you think of a title? A central mystery? Which of the Dahlias might be most involved in it?
Which of the recipes interests you most? Which are you most likely to try? Does your family have a favorite recipe that dates back to the Depression era?
This is the last episode in this series. Several people have asked me to rerun this slow-read series, so I’ll be doing that, starting July 23. Then our next Slow Reads project will begin in September: the first book in my Cottage Tales series, The Tale of Hill Top Farm. This book is readily available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio. I’ll let you know when I’ve posted the schedule.
Meanwhile, there will be the usual All About Thyme (first Mondays) and LifeScapes (third Mondays). And the comment sections of all the posts are always open—and free. I’ll be happy to meet you there!
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