I thought this book was wonderful. I loved the way the author used 3 very different women living in different social levels, who all had a serious problem they needed to deal with. The way they managed their own problems while also supporting each other was heart warming and inspiring. I also appreciated the strength of the writing which really added to my enjoyment of the book as I am a bit picky about writing quality. This is among some of my best reads this year so far and I will be happy to read whatever this author produces next.
P.S. The childbirth scene was so well written. I could barely breathe.

Book takes place in deep south shortly befor the Depression and tells the intertwining stories and strengths of 3 women from differing levels of Southern society.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this book.

What a fabulously delicious book. This book has a fantastic story line, excellent characters and is just unputdownable. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and I enjoyed it immensely.

What a great book. This book telling the story of three strong women whose lives become entwined. This book sucked me right in and was hard to put down. Great book!

3 women from completely different backgrounds find each other and bring out their strengths that they didn't know were there. Annie with wealth and her own company, Retta, her maid and her husband she loves. Gertrude, from the swamps with her 4 daughters and memories of how hard life can be. They find each other. A quick read because I wanted to know about these women. Kudos!

Set in the South during the Great Depression, the lives of three women are intertwined as each deal with heartbreaking family tragedies. This is well-paced and beautifully written with outstanding character development. I felt like I really got into the heads and hearts of all three women and felt empathy for each. I also loved the historical aspect. I hope that Deb Spera will be writing more.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Park Row and Deb Spera for my complimentary e-copy ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Deb Spera's debut novel <b>Call Your Daughter Home</b> is captivating from the first line. <i>“It's easier to kill a man than a gator but it takes the same kind of time."</i> Gertie knows her way around the swampland and her father has taught her how to hunt and survive. She knows above all else that a skilled hunter must exercise patience. Before her is a 10 foot mama gator protecting her nest. For both the stakes are high. The tension in this moment for the reader is wondering which mother will endure. Gertie and her family are destitute. Her two eldest daughters have been sent to live with family and her youngest is ailing. Her husband is an abusive drunk whose wrath has been witnessed by their daughters. Can she repair the damage that he has wrought upon them?

Our second narrator, Annie, is the matriarch of one of the richest and most powerful families in town. They are the largest employer with many of the men tending to their crops and the women working at her store. On the surface it would seem as if Annie has the world at her fingertips. Certainly she enjoys a freedom that the other women do not have. But she is not fulfilled. Her family secrets have pushed her daughters away. She yearns to reconnect with them.

Retta is the third narrator. A first generation freed Black woman, she knows hardship and struggle. Perhaps my favorite character in the book, Retta is a true Christian at heart who exemplifies compassion and empathy. She sees and understands things the other women don’t. As the old folks would say, Retta has "a veil over her eyes." In one scene Retta is serving as the midwife to a young woman named Nelly. It is a difficult labor. The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. Retta beckons the grandmother and encourages her and Nelly to call forth their daughters, to bring them home.

It is Retta's voice that carries this message to Annie and Greta as well. She serves as a pillar of strength urging them to push forward and persevere through their pain so that they may speak into their daughters’ lives and call them home.

<b>Call Your Daughter Home</b> is one of those that makes you cry but it so endearing and so hopeful that it really will touch a lot of people.

While Call Your Daughter Home had an intriguing premise, I found the writing a bit too dry to be a thoroughly enjoyable book. The characters were interesting but not fully engaging. Overall, it was a satisfactory tale but not a book I would necessarily recommend for others.

Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera is set in South Caroline in the early 1920s, right after the devastation of the cotton harvest due to a boll weevil infestation. Times are tough and getting tougher. This book toggles between three female narrators. There's Retta who is the first in her family to not be a slave, Gertrude who is raising four girls after losing her husband, and Annie who is the mother of four grown children and leading a very successful business employing many women. The lives of these three women spin together to make a quick and satisfying tale. Read and enjoy!

I had the pleasure of meeting this author in Memphis and this is a book for the soul- it's a testament to survival and especially women's survival. I would recommend this book to fans of The Help, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Twelve-Mile Straight. Call Your Daughter home is a story of three women in the 1920s and what they have to endure and overcome to survive. This was a great book to read to be transcended to a different time and place.

There is something absolutely irresistible about historical books that span generations. Typically I find them as novels that follow a woman, her daughter, then her daughter... but what was even more interesting is that, Call Your Daughter Home is a novel that follows three generations of woman all at the same time... Great Depression, South Carolina. Their lives intersect as they fight their own personal injustices in a small town setting.

The three women are about as different as different can be. There’s Annie, the matriarch of the Cole family who owns her own sewing business with employees sewing grain sack dresses and later, fancy men’s shirts. Annie struggles with empty nest syndrome, her children all grown, and her estrangement from her daughters. Can she find the strength to connect with them and heal? Or is she destined to end her days on her once-plantation, never understanding the real (and awful) reason her beloved family splintered.

Then there’s Retta, a first generation freed slave who still works for the Coles on the kitchen. With the heartache that comes with never completing her family, Retta has a kind, maternal heart and takes several under her wing throughout the book. Retta knows the awful truth about the Coles and uses her maternal instinct to shelter others, both figuratively and literally. I think Retta was the most admirable character in the whole book.

Finally, we meet Gertrude, a poor white mother of four children living in the swamp, whose maternal instinct is also strong. She knows she must fight for her family and she goes about it with the strength of ten women. She’s admirable in her own right. I found the swampy setting of her story to be a mucky representation of her struggles.

Call Your Daughter Home is relatively short novel at 352 pages, but one could almost write a whole dissertation analyzing the title and comparing the lives of the three main characters. What could these women of different ages, backgrounds, and color have in common? As turns out, surprisingly a lot... I recommend this book highly for readers who love historical fiction and rich family narratives. I also want to mention how gorgeous the cover is... is simply screams epic southern story, and I love it.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me a review copy via NetGalley.

The author did a brilliant job of capturing the time period in this novel. The characters and plot were also well written. This was a great piece of historical fiction!

Fantastic debut novel! The individual stories of Gertrude, Retta, and Annie were each very interesting, but their mutual story was just as good. I loved the strength of these characters and their commitment to their children.
This was a hard book to read due to the circumstances of the women, but at the same time, it was hard to put down because their stories were so interesting and well-written.

Three women, with only loose connections in the beginning, take turns narrating their stories that eventually will draw them together in Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera, just published on June 11. Each woman hefts a heavy load in life without help or heed. Each is courageous, not so much from choice, but because there is nothing else to be. Set in rural 1924 South Carolina, the boll weevil has eaten the cotton crops with days of depression soon to come, but their difficulties go beyond the poverty they face.

Gertrude Pardee begins her narrative with “It’s easier to kill a man than a gator, but it takes the same kind of wait.” She deals with an abusive husband, always wondering what she has done to cause his cruelty, until he begins to abuse their four daughters as well. The way she deals with it will haunt her through the rest of the book.

Annie Coles, seemingly from the upper class, begins, “Every time the telephone rings, I am amazed,” and goes on to say that her husband not only bought one phone for the house, but one for her Sewing Circle, making them the first rural town for miles to be connected to the outside world. But there are secrets with two estranged daughters; two sons, one with a stutter and one who shadows his father; and another son who carried a secret into suicide.

The third woman is Retta Bootles who begins her story, “I am an old Negro woman, too old to carry a crying white child across town and through the thicket of cypress that leads into Shake Rag where we live.” In the first generation of freedom, she is still working for the Coles. Hampered by the customs of the times, she may be the strongest of the three. Her love for her husband and her faith give her strength, and her ability to “see” the dead, including her own daughter, keeps her connected to those she has lost.

Their way wends toward the annual church camp where much of the story resides. The rural religion of the women, treated honestly and respectfully, is a vital element and rings true.

The book is not a light read, but a compelling one. Secrets begin at the first chapter and do not let up until the end which is necessary, but not “happily ever after.” Once you start the book, plan on leaving the dusting until another day.

For those in reach of the Mississippi Book Festival on August 17, the appearance of the author Deb Spera will be an added bonus.

Richly atmospheric and evocative novel set in South Carolina a few years before the beginning of the Great Depression. Spera has a real gift for writing believable period characters. There was never a single note that seemed too modern. I believe she is a real find.

This historical southern novel sings with style and depth. It is difficult to remember that it is a debut effort - Deb Spera plays our emotions like a southern hymn. This is a book to keep and read again when the world seems too trying or you are finding the daily grind a bit too much. Taking place in the early 1920s in South Carolina just following three years of Mr. Boll Weevil destroying all the cotton, and just prior to the Great Depression, this should be a depressing story. Throw in Mr. Pardee and Mr. Coles and you would normally have a sit-down and cry. Except for these wonderful, strong, spiritual mothers, that is.

Gertrude Caison Pardee is married to a lazy, abusive drunk. She has watched as their four daughters slowly starve down to hungry twigs while he drinks away his pay working for his Daddy in Reevesville. When he starts whaling on the girls as well as Gert she has to make a choice - and the only choice she has is to escape from the reach of him and his father. There is no money - they will have to literally 'run' away, but there is a rumor of work at a sewing factory called The Sewing Circle in the nearby community of Branchville. Branchville is where Gert's brother Berns and his wife Marie live and try to care for and feed the two oldest of Gert's daughters, Edna, 15, and Lily, 13. It is a sewing machine job that she knows how to do, and it comes with a house, but it is not far enough away to escape Alvin. Or his father, Otto.

Retta and Odell Bootles are comfortable with what they have. They lost their only child, a daughter, at the age of eight many years since, and both work. Retta is a cook-housekeeper for the Coles, and Odell, who lost a leg working for the railroad, is now the community ragman. They live in the black community of Shake Rag, across the street from the only white resident of Shake Rag, Oretta's best friend, Mrs. Watson. It is the death of Mrs. Watson that made the job and house open up to provide a life for the Pardee girls. And there is no time to waiver - 10-year-old Alma is skinny and frail, but 6-year-old Mary is on the verge of starving to death. Retta agrees to keep her for a couple of days while Gert goes back to Reevesville for the rest of her things and gets settled into Mrs. Watson's house.

Annie Coles has been married to Edward for many years. They have two grown daughters who are estranged, married, and living in Charlotte. Annie hasn't heard from them in years and does not understand the estrangement. They have two living sons, Eddie who works with his father running the plantation, and Lonnie, a stutterer, and shy, who works with his mother at the Sewing Circle factory, making feedbags and men's shirts and employing 47 women. Their third son, Buck, committed suicide when he was 12 years old.

These lives come together, mesh when the community gathers for the annual Methodist revival the first week of October in the countryside, at The Camp. Annie is deeply into a hunger strike, her reaction upon finding out why her girls ran away, why Buck killed himself. The Sewing Circle is shut down for the duration of the revival, and Gert is hired to nurse Annie, and three of her daughters, already beginning to thrive, are hired to help Retta cook at the camp. And it was there, at Camp, that these three vibrant, caring women work together and clean house.

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel from Netgalley, Deb Spera, and Harlequin -Park Row. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

Deb Spera is a force; small wonder that Call Your Daughter Home is the book that bloggers have been talking about. This barn burner of a debut goes on sale today. My thanks go to Net Galley and Harlequin for the review copy. It curled its fingers around me on page one, and by page ten I knew it wouldn’t let me go till it was done with me. It ended as powerfully as it began.

The year is 1924. Gertrude Pardee lives with her four little girls in a shack in the swamp in Third World conditions; they are nearly feral. A storm is coming, but Gert has a job to do. Her brutal ass hat of a husband lies dead in the swamp, dispatched by the bullet she blasted into his brainpan. As the storm bears down, she peels off her only dress and strides naked into the muck to deal with his corpse:

“Alligators feed once a week, and sometimes, if they prey is big enough, they don’t need to eat for almost a year. But I don’t know how long it takes a gator to eat big prey. Daddy never said nothing ‘bout that and I never asked.”

Our other two main characters are Retta, the first free woman in her family, and Annie, Retta’s employer. Retta cares for Mary, Gert’s youngest, when Gert is too sick and injured from the broken face she sustained the last time Alvin beat her; Retta’s husband Odell and her neighbors all tell her that it’s trouble to bring a white child into Shake Rag. “Don’t get messed up with that white family. No good can come of it,” and she knows it’s true. What if the girl dies? But Gert coaxed her into it, telling her it would be the Christian thing to do, and Retta is moved by this sick, helpless five year old. She assures everyone it’s just for three days.

Miss Annie is a Caucasian small businesswoman and wife of a farmer, yet she has trouble of her own; there’s some dark family baggage she’s been avoiding for a good, long while. As the storm bears down, evidence comes to light and she is forced to see it. Not one of us would want to be Miss Annie; believe it.

Spera weaves a captivating tale, and we see the world from the disparate points of view of all three women, each of them told alternately in a first person narrative, and we’re also told how they see each other. The setting is dead accurate, brooding and thick with dread, and it scaffolds the development of each character more capably than anything I have read recently.

It is Retta that tells us that as we give birth, we must call out to our child so that “whichever soul is at the gate will come through.” She called out to her girl as she birthed her, but now she is gone. In fact, each of these three women has lost a daughter, and this provides the central theme of the story.

Feminists and those that love Southern fiction have to get this book and read it. There’s nothing like it. Do it.

4.5 for this one
A story of three very strong and memorable women in rural 1924 South Carolina. The book is narrated by the three who are a plantation owners wife, a freed slave woman who still works on that plantation, and a poor white woman with four daughters and an abusive husband.
We are told of their pain, despair and struggle to survive, they are mothers and will do what they must to protect their children.
I really enjoyed this book!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC

I received this from Netgalley.com for a review.

1924 South Carolina. Gertrude, Retta and Annie lead very different lives but each of them find the strength to stand up to terrible injustices that have long plagued their small town.

Great debut, good read. Definitely put this on your reading list.

4.25 ☆

Call Your Daughter Home is set in 1924 in rural South Carolina where times are hard, very hard. The region is desperately poor, having lost two seasons of cotton to the boll weevil infestation. It tells the stories of three women from distinctly different backgrounds. (My use of the term colored in this review rather than black is only to stay within the timeframe of the novel; I mean no disrespect).

Gertrude is a poor white woman, married to Alvin, an abusive, alcoholic husband. They live in Reevesville where Alvin works at his Daddy's sawmill. She is struggling to keep her children and herself from starving. Alvin? He's the reason they're starving, drinking all their food away! Her two oldest children have already been sent to live with her brother Berns and his wife in Branchville, her hometown. She now goes to see if he can take the other two as well. Berns tells her that he knows of a job at The Sewing Center; one of the workers died, and the position comes with a small house. He agrees to take the older of her remaining children, but tells her the youngest, Mary, is too sick and belongs with her. Go get the job so you can take care of your own he urges.

Oretta Bootles (married to Odell) has been the maid for the Coles family since she was old enough to serve in the position. Her family has been slaves owned by the Coles for generations. She is the first free colored woman to serve them. Retta runs the house. After Mrs. Cole gives Gert the job at The Sewing Center, Gertie asks Retta to let Mary stay with her for the four days she needs to go back to Reevesville, put her affairs in order and come set up the home in Branchville and begin work. Retta, seeing Gertie's desperation, agrees which sets the tongues in Shake Rag (the colored section of town) to wagging. What's a colored woman doing taking care of a white child in her home? And when they realize that Gertie will be living in Shake Rag with her family? What's going on?!?Are the whites going to take Shake Rag from them too?

Annie Coles is married to Edwin. The Coles own most of the land in Branchville. They have two adult sons living with them; Eddie who works with his father on farm business; and Lonnie who (to his father’s chagrin) works with his mother at The Sewing Center, a company she started and manages. Their third son, Buster, died at aged twelve, and their two daughters Sarah and Molly are estranged from the family. They left home after Buster’s death and have refused to see or talk with their father since. Annie is heartbroken with grief over Buster’s death and the loss of her daughters which she doesn’t understand but which time will clarify.

The lives and secrets of these three women will entwine them in ways they could never imagine. “None of us get what we deserve. We make the best of what we got.”

This is a wonderful read with its richly drawn characters and well-set scenes! Spera puts the reader into the middle of it all. I came to admire each of the three women for different reasons and was sorry to see the story end. An impressive debut, I look forward to reading more from Deb Spera.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Park Row for allowing me to read an ARC of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are my own.