Call Your Daughter Home #NetGalley

I am not sure I completely understood Call Your Daughter Home. It took me a very long time to read it as I kept putting it off due to the lack of interest.

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.

The 1920s in Branchville, South Carolina was a time of racial and economic divisions. Those differences and divisions permeate Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera but are not the story of this book. This book is about about mothers' love that transcends race, religion, and culture. It is the characters and voices of the women that make the book come to life and create the emotional connection that make this a memorable read.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2019/11/call-your-daughter-home.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

I did not finish Call Your Daughter Home. I thought the synopsis and setting sounded great, but I struggled to feel attached or interested in the characters. I don't love women's fiction, and it felt very women's fiction instead of historical fiction. I think others may enjoy it, but I DNF at 21%

This books was tough to read. Plus it was not what I was expecting. However, it is well written and will make a great library selection.

This book is about the life of three women in a Southern town during the depression. It will appeal to people who like descriptive prose. The characters are well written and there are great details. I can imagine the characters and setting as I was reading.

4.5*
Spera’s book should appeal to anyone who loved the bestseller, Where the Crawdads Sing. Set in South Carolina in 1924, this story focuses on a community living in poverty and struggling to survive. It’s also about domestic abuse and a family broken apart by personal tragedy.

There are three central characters: Gertie, a poor abused wife and mother who just wants to take care of her girls; Annie, a woman of means who is separated from her daughters but who tries to help her son who stutters and who’s a loser in his father’s eyes; and lastly, there’s Retta, the hard-working Black woman who works for Annie, has a good marriage and a good heart. The three women’s lives all become entangled as the Gertie looks for help in getting employment and housing for her daughters.

One can’t help but be drawn in to the moving story of poverty, abuse, secrets and motherhood. The characters are beautifully drawn and are powerful examples of resilience. Each of the women have secret strengths that enable them to keep going, despite hardships. Spera’s book will be linked to other notable Southern fiction that immerses readers in the setting of back-country and women who do what needs to be done to survive.

Thank you for this book! From time to time there are books that make it difficult to pick up another right away - you want to stay with the characters a bit longer. This was one of those books. I wasn’t ready to leave these three amazing characters quite yet.

Family, strength, growth and friendship were all themes in this well written novel. Thank you Ms. Spera, I haven’t read a book like this one in a long while.

4.25 stars
Heartbreaking yet inspiring southern women’s fiction at its finest. A story that captures the reader’s heart and senses. The story is told from three perspectives - Gertrude, Retta and Annie. All three women come from disparate backgrounds and have faced hardships. Gertrude is dirt poor with 4 young daughters. She has suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually at the hands of her abusive husband. Retta comes from a family of slaves in former generations. She works as the housekeeper for the powerful Coles family, just like her mother before her. She has suffered a devastating loss. Annie is married to Edwin Coles. Their eldest son committed suicide at the tender age of 12. Since then, the family has never been the same. She has been estranged from her two grown daughters for 15 years, who she misses deeply.

This is a story that made me sad, angry, disgusted, triumphant and more. The author is masterful with her words and descriptions. It is a strong dose of southern living and the historical struggles southerners have experienced. There were a few bits that went into depth about religion that went over my head, but otherwise, this story was fantastic and highly relatable.

A gracious thank you to Park Row Books and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very powerful book which resonated with truths, many uncomfortable. It is the story of three families from very different walks of life. Gertrude is the poor white mother of four girls, wife of a drunken abuser, and her family is starving when she takes the best way out she can. Rhetta is the black maid to the Coles family who takes in Gertrude’s youngest daughter and saves her life. The Coles family pretty much owns the town, but hides their own secrets. The story was engaging and played out in both expected and unexpected ways, and was very true to the time period. The characters were well-drawn and interesting. I recommend it for those who enjoy historical fiction.

Thanks to Netgalley and Park Row/Harlequin for an ARC for this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME by Deb Serpa is a work of historical fiction set amidst the rural poverty and segregated society of 1924 South Carolina. Three women share the storytelling: Gertrude Pardee, Oretta Bootles, and Annie Coles. Gertrude, forced to marry as a teen, has four young daughters and an often drunk and abusive husband. She can barely afford to feed the family until she is offered a job at the Sewing Circle. That business is owned by Annie through her own family legacy, although her husband Edwin is an influential plantation owner dealing with the cotton crop's destruction by the boll weevil and trying to make money by converting to tobacco. Retta lives in Shake Rag, with her ailing husband and other former slaves or their descendants. She has long worked as housekeeper for Miss Annie's family and is a kind soul who often helps others, including Gertrude and her girls. CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME is filled with conflict between family members, especially mothers and daughters. There are questions of morality, faith, guilt, and retribution which are adeptly handled and woven throughout the story. At one point, Preacher quotes Ephesians 6:11, "put on the whole armor of God" in order to stand "against spiritual wickedness in high places." In addition, these women, two of whom have lost children, have to rely on their own mothers' words ("Mama used to say if you don't ask for help, nobody will know how to give it") and the concern they develop for each other. Each experiences both physical and emotional pain and questions her own abilities, as expressed in reflections like: "I wasn't a good mother, that much is fact, but I was the only kind I knew how to be" or "I can't see what is to come. ... I fear I will stumble over the edge without knowing, and tumble to the sharp rocks below, too late to save my own soul." In a note on "A Bit of Background," Serpa explains how her own grandmother and great-grandmother influenced this book, including details like the peach cobbler recipe. She says that she was "humbled and inspired by the ferocity of their motherhood." Book group members, especially readers of titles like Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing or Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, will certainly empathize with the characters in Serpa's debut novel which was a LibraryReads selection in June. This title might work for Junior Theme; Booklist recommended CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME for teens, too, due to the "complicated mother-daughter relationships."

Call Your Daughter Home was a wonderful story about motherhood and the power of friendship. Amongst an amazing backdrop of the American South and the trials and tribulations they face on a daily basis in overwhelming. Part desperation and part full of hope, this book will pull you in and not let go. Highly recommend!

Beautiful, emotionally resonant storytelling anchors this impressive debut novel set in 1924 South Carolina. The reader gets a powerful look at the lives of women during this time and place through the first-person narration of three memorable women. Despite the differences in class and race the narrators have several things in common that define their lives; troubled mother-daughter relationships and the powerless status of married women.

The tense plot builds to a startling and satisfying ending which is equal parts heart=wrenching, impactful and hopeful.

A story of strength and resilience as 3 women, from 3 different circumstances stand up against prejudice, abuse, and corruption in the 1920's South.

Spera’s debut novel brims with grim authenticity as she recounts the unexpected bond between three women in the small town of Branchville, South Carolina. Her own great-grandmother and grandmother came from this same place, enduring grinding poverty while raising their families as best they could, and her deep familiarity with the land and people seeps into the pages.

In 1924, five years before the Great Depression’s official start, hard times have already hit. The boll weevil infestation has devastated local cotton production, and the region hasn’t recovered. Married at thirteen, Gertrude (Gert) Pardee has an abusive alcoholic husband, four growing daughters, and no money to properly feed or clothe them. When she sees a dark way out, she takes it and doesn’t look back. When Gert arrives at the home of Mrs. Annie Coles to ask about a job and a place to live, she speaks first with the Coles’s black maid, Oretta (Retta) Bootles, and their three lives converge.

Their voices are unique and distinctive, and their personalities transcend what seem at first to be stereotypical roles. Gert sees the Missus a “fine old lady” whose house is “pure white and grand as the entrance to heaven,” but something terrible is clearly eating the Coles family from the inside. Annie is seventy, with two sons who struggle to emerge from under their father’s controlling thumb, two estranged daughters, and a beloved son who committed suicide years ago (she doesn’t know the reason). Her voice and painful journey are sadly believable. Retta, the middle-aged daughter of former slaves, is rough-edged but compassionate; she runs Miss Annie’s house while going home each night to her husband in their black neighborhood, “Shake Rag.” Their plot arcs aren’t equally satisfying (it would be a spoiler to say why), but the novel succeeds in evoking Southern women’s survival during tough times.

(from the Historical Novels Review, August 2019)

This book takes place in Depression-era South Carolina and is told in three voices: Gertrude, an impoverished and battered wife; Annie, the submissive wife of a supposed stalwart businessman; and Oretta, a Black domestic and daughter of former slaves. Their lives coalesce through circumstances that push them all to their limits and cause them to break through former impenetrable barriers. I loved this book so much and think anyone who is a fan of Sing, Unburied, Sing or Where the Crawdads Sing will love it as much as I did. I give it six stars.

This has 3 narrators...Annie, Gertrude, and Retta. The more you read of their tale, the more it grabs you and you don't want to put this book down. I was absolutely fascinated by the setting in South Carolina and the time period of the early 1920's which were areas that I am not familiar with, The stress that the 20's put on people of the south with boll weevil destruction of the cotton, the beginning of tobacco farming, the first women in a state government position. Plus there is a secret that is slowly revealed. Read the book and discuss it with a book group. For readers of 'Where the Crawdads Sing'.

I enjoyed this book, the setting and the mood were on point and each of the female protagonists had well formed characters that were very compelling. It was a good swift read but also thoughtful and touched upon very difficult situations and issues. I would recommend this book to those interested in women's fiction, or southern fiction.

I received an advance copy of Call Your Daughter Home through NetGalley and Park Row in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Labeling a book ‘historical fiction’ will draw me in every time. There’s really no better hook if you want me to read your book. That being said, not all historical fictions are created equal and sometimes you have to read a handful of absolutely meh ones to find the proverbial diamonds.

Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera might not quite achieve Diamond Status but it’s definitely a gem.

Set in the 1924, only a few years before The Great Depression, the novel follows three women living in rural South Carolina. The women are unique and very different from each other – Annie is well-off elderly white woman with more skeletons in her family closet than even she knows, Retta is an older black woman who was one of the first in her family born free – though she is met with skepticism by blacks and whites alike because she works for Annie, and Gertrude is an impoverished white woman with four young daughters and the most abusive husband I’ve ever encountered in fiction. They are connected – Retta working for Annie just as Retta’s mother did before her, Retta was pregnant at the same time Gertrude’s mother was, and Gertrude needing both Annie and Retta’s help if she and her daughters will survive.


A novel that begins with a murder, a carefully orchestrated murder involving the participation of an alligator to erase the evidence, is bound to be dark.

And Call Your Daughter Home is dark. It’s dark in a real way, one that is easy to imagine in a rural place when the world is moving on from one way of life and the inhabitants there are struggling to keep up. Keeping up is a daily battle and when being alive is a daily battle, it can be hard to find light.

Over the course of the story, should you choose to challenge yourself and read it – as you should, you will encounter spousal abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, murder, pedophilia, racism, suicide, teen pregnancy, mental illness, alcoholism, and marginalization. These things could be called trigger warnings, I suppose, but it also doesn’t take long to realize that, in the setting of Call Your Daughter Home, these things would have been and were real, rampant, and constant.

Remember, going in, that the story is set in rural South Carolina in 1924. Poverty was a way of life for people of all races, and poverty can breed desperation and violence. Jim Crow laws were in effect and there was a clear distinction between whites and blacks in the South at the time. The cotton crops had just been decimated and the people who had only just begun to rebuild after the Civil War were brought down again, this time by things they could not control. Girls married young because it was their only option and because their parents decided they should. The things in Deb Spera’s book were real, they were history. That makes it all the more important that her story be read now.

Enjoyed the book and reading about the time period of the 20's in the south. The characters were likable, and I felt, fully defined. I will be looking for more from this author!