What a beautiful story of standing up for what you believe in to help your family.
Petra becomes a pecan sheller even though she wants nothing more than to go to school.
But once her mom gets fired from the factory and there is talk of lowering the wages she has to find a way to fight back.
She fights alongside others and learns more about herself and her family in the process.
A deep story of real history of fighting for your rights.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it had that historical element that I was looking for and enjoyed the way everything came together. I enjoyed how good the characters were and worked in this time-period. Lupe Ruiz-Flores wrote this perfectly and am excited for more.

The Pecan Sheller is set during the late 1930s and follows Petra, a thirteen-year-old girl who has to leave school and get a job shelling pecans after her father’s death in order to help her Amá pay the bills and take care of Petra’s younger siblings. While working in the pecan factory, Petra makes new friends, but also is confronted with terrible working conditions and seeing many people get tuberculosis and die. When one of her new friends dies and the factory owners want to cut already low wages, Petra is ready to fight for change.

This is really intense in many ways and deals with many tough topics, but I also think Petra’s perspective gives enough distance from the topics to make them real without making them overwhelming. I also really loved how much she felt like a teenager, wanting to do fun things and hang out with her friends, as well as wanting to finish high school, just like she promised her Papa. Her relationship with Amá is especially contentious because she’s the one denying Petra, and it’s hard for Petra to see and understand that it’s coming from a place of love.

I also really appreciated the historical setting, as this is a period I was unfamiliar with, and seeing early unionization and that it included even some of the youngest workers makes the book feel very hopeful. If unionization worked almost a hundred years ago, surely it’s important today and still making important changes for working conditions and wages.

I really enjoyed this book and the history it gave me. I also love Petra as a narrator, and the nuance of the story’s different characters. There are definitely heartbreaking moments, but overall this feels like a story of hope and community.

It is the middle of the Great Depression and Pedra’s father has died. There is not enough money for her, her step-mother, and her brother and sister to survive, so she must drop out of school and join her mother in shelling pecans.

The work is hard, and it pays very little. Pedra desperately wants to go back to school, but knows she must do this to help her family survive. She works hard, but when the pay is cut, the works go on strike, with the help of a local union leader.

The union leader in the book is real, as are the pecan shellers, which the author’s mother and grandmother were. And there were 13 year olds, such as Pedra, working in the factories.

I love historical fiction, because it often gives you a look at a time and palace you know knowing about. In this case, the 1930s, San Antonio, Texas, where the poorest of the poor work for pennies a day.

I very much liked Pedra as a character, though she started out naive, she grew stronger and more worldly as the story went on.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is being published on the 1st of April 2025.