This was a well written book and one I could not put down. We meet 3 women who’s lives are intertwined. These women are different in so many ways, yet are the same. The story is told precisely and answers any questions that you may have. This is a must read. This book will stay with me for a long time. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving the book in manner had no bearing on my review.

The south after the civil war was decimated and could not recover before the boll weevil took out agriculture and the stock market crash took out everything else. With the backdrop of this tumultuous time for the south are three women who are strong but facing their own demons. Annie is the matriarch of the richest family in Bankersville, SC but her family holds old, dark secrets that finally come to light. Retta is Mrs. Annie's cook, who is trying to hold her family and community together. Gertrude is running from her choices and trying to give her daughters a good life.
"Call Your Daughter Home" isn't a southern gothic tale in the sense of Faulkner or McCullars, but it does show the dark side of the south that no one wants to talk about. Racism and abuse at the hands of husbands young wives didn't ask for. This was one of those stories that stays with you after you finish it, wanting to know more about the characters you left behind when you closed the book.

I LOVED this book! I read a lot of historical fiction, and this one is now in my top five. I was hooked from the opening lines, "It's easier to kill a man than a gator, but it takes the same kind of wait. You got to watch for the weakness, and take your shot to the back of the head." I haven't read many stories from the time period - 1924, South Carolina - so I learned a bit about the history, especially about the boll weevil infestation, which was new to me. Farmers had lost their crops and the economy was depressed. Our three protagonists are each struggling in their own way: Gertrude, a white woman struggling to raise her daughters with an abusive husband; Retta, a first-generation freed slave trying to find her place in the world after her young daughter's death; and Annie, married to a plantation owner and trying to hold her troubled family together after their young son committed suicide. Their stories become more entwined throughout the story, culminating in a breathtaking climax that I did not quite predict. Action, suspense, compelling dialogue, a strong sense of place, inspiring characters - this book has it all. And it tackles some heavy issues, including sexual abuse, domestic abuse, racism and poverty with grace and dignity.

I especially loved the strong women characters and how their relationships lifted each other up; they were their own champions with no need of men swooping to their rescue. The writing was excellent. Here is another great quote: "Men can't bear what women must. They jump to cry insanity as cause for a woman's unhappiness; the utterance of the unutterable must be dementia. it's just too much to consider otherwise."

I highly recommend this title.

Thanks for NetGalley for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my review.

This was such a wonderful book! Very well written, set in the south with strong and courageous women featured. The writing is beautiful! I will definitely find author's other books.

This is a beautiful historical novel set in South Carolina in the early 1920’s. Slavery is abolished, the heat is unbearable and the boll weevil in infestation contributes to the economic woes, a situation exacerbated by the Great Depression to come a decade later. Three women narrate this novel; despite their differences in social class, race and stature, their lives intercept in heartbreaking and beautiful ways. If Southern Historical Fiction is a genre, count me as one of its biggest fans!

I loved this book. So well written with heartfelt character development. I felt as if I was there, in the midst of the small town, the families, the tragedies. Debra Spera is an author to remember. Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin for the opportunity ro read and review this ARC.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It was a gut wrenching story. 5 stars. I will check out others novels by this author in the future.

This is the story of three women, from different backgrounds and their struggles and survival in the 1920's.

The book will draw you in right from the beginning. The storytelling creates movie playing imagery and captivates with the many secrets and lies in the lives of the three women. The characters are well developed with strong emotions and feelings that you can't help but feel with them.

Although the story was a bit slow in the middle, I would definitely recommend this book.

This story pulls you in and makes you feel like you are one of the neighbors, watching the story unfold as it happens. Deb Spera tells the story of three women of extremely different circumstances that live in a small South Carolina town in the 1920's. She developed the characters very well and the effort shows. You can see Annie, Gertrude and Retta as they live and work, doing their best to keep their families safe and happy. Their interaction is forced due to the boll weevil infestation and cotton supply decline in this era. The background is authentic, the story engrossing. Ms Spera has done an excellent job of telling their story and making you care.

Set in 1924 South Carolina, the book follows the lives of three women. Gertrude, a mother of four, who is caught between poverty and an abusive husband. Gretta, a first generation slave, who works for the third, Annie, the matriarch of a rich and influential family. In order to save her starving children, Gertrude shoots her husband and leaves him for the alligators to devour. She begs Annie for a job at the sewing circle, and leaves her youngest child with Gretta for a few days while she waits for the police to come for her.

This book did a good job of weaving the three stories together. Everything moved smoothly and at a nice pace. The characters seemed realistic. Overall, well worth reading.

South Carolina in 1924, three women with three different backgrounds. White, black, poor and rich. their lives are all intertwined together. Great character development. You can't help but feel all the emotions and feelings. So many secrets and lies. Abuse, pain and survival. Really great book. I loved everything about it. I received this book from Net Galley and Harlequin for a honest review. The opinions are my own.

The story was uplifting and sad. The relationships between the whites, their servants (civil war had ended) and the family problems and celebrations all were told beautifully. However, there were so many characters that I sometimes had trouble following who was who and doing what, etc. Naïveté, integrity, brains, etc. are a big part of the books which inspired me to keep on reading. I am grateful to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I received an ARC of Call Your Daughter Home from Netgalley and this is my honest review.


I found this story to be absorbing and very well written. Its character driven and intense and enjoyed it very much. I would recommend it to any one but especially to women who have had their own struggles. At times heartbreaking , this book will bring you inside the hearts and minds of its characters

Deb Spera did such an amazing job developing her characters, Love them or hate them, the reader definitely gets to know them on a very deep level

Thank you NetGalley !

4.5 but am rounding up. I was hooked from the start and I could not wait to finish this book--whenever I put it down, I looked forward to picking it up again! Story. Story. Story. Even though I figured out a bit of the plot/trajectory, I didn't care. I found this book compelling.

Note: Also called Alligator.

The setting:

Three strong women in South Carolina in the years preceeding the Great Depression. [also populated with other, notable, secondary characters] Their lives converge. Poverty, racism, male dominance, heartache, family. Finding strength--within oneself and bonding with others.

Gertrude, a mother of four daughters, with an abusive [and often drunk] husband. Dirt poor.

Annie, the matriarch of the dysfunctional Coles family--influential plantation proprietors whose cotton crop was ruined by boll weevils. They have now turned to tobacco [primarily] and Annie's Sewing Circle for income. But, monied. All five children have a story.

Retta, by far my favorite character. A first-generation freed slave, whose family was once owned by the Coles. I LOVED HER.

And if the brief relaying of how to make a peach cobber [from Retta to Sarah] doesn't put a smile on your face, I don't know what will.

Some wonderful descriptions:

"Worry is something I've never understood. What good does it do, except drain possibility from the day?"

"...dress is well made and lined with silk so soft I can't believe worms made it."

"She bites at the bottom of her mouth like she's punishing the words that come from it."

"In your place is a loud quiet."

"I feel like I'm asleep and awake at the same time; it is an odd thing, but my feet put themselves one in front of the other..."

"He grimaces, embarrassed to have his humanity on display. I've forgotten what humility looks like."

Read this book! The only problem--you will have to wait until publication--June 11, 2019.

I just finished this ARC and I have to admit that it was not what I expected at all. I did love it and I especially loved the very beginning and the end, although the end made me feel admittedly a bit sad.
The book takes place in the southern United States during the 1920's with flashbacks here and there. It follows the lives of 3 woman that are all intertwined, and who come to depend on each other. All 3 coincidentally have daughters that need to be called back home in different ways. The three woman are Gertrude, a poor white woman; Annie, a well off white woman; and Oretta, a black woman who runs Annie's house. I don't want to go into the story too much because I don't want to give anything away. I really did enjoy the book and would definitely recommend it.

I so enjoy a book with strong female characters. This one, which takes place in the South in the years before the Depression, has just that. The cotton market has sunk due to the infestation of the boll weevil and the tobacco market is saturated, thus almost valueless. Money is hard to come by, hardship is not.

It’s mainly about three women and their families. Mrs. Coles – Annie – owns the Sewing Circle, a successful company employing local women that manufactures seed bags and is branching out into mens shirts and womens apparel. Mrs. Coles’ life is wonderful to the observing eye, but there is a dreadful secret that lies in wait.

There’s Retta, Annie’s maid, who has been with Annie’s family since forever. Retta is skillful in so many areas, including taking good care of Annie, running the household, cooking delicious meals, healing the sick, birthing the young’uns, and caring for almost anyone.

Gertrude, dirt poor, is beaten regularly by a drunken husband, finally rids herself of him, and raises her four starving daughters.

There’s so much to this story as we read of the strengths and imperfections of these women. Each woman must endure her own heartache and hardship and, with determination, does and survives.

The story is expertly and effectively narrated by each of the three women. The author’s writing style is remarkable. Each of the characters was so real to me. I absolutely loved Retta and Annie, and once Gertrude became less bitter and less mean, she became a softer and more likable character to me. Each page from start to finish held my interest and my empathy.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It was my pleasure. Well done, Ms Spera, well done.

South Carolina, 1924.  The South is recovering from a massive boll weevil infestation that has devastated the local economy.  The lives of three women are about to intersect in unexpected ways.

"None of us get what we deserve. We make the best of what we got." *

Gertrude is raising four daughters as her husband drinks away their money and becomes increasingly abusive.

Retta is a first-generation freed slave employed by the Coles family who previously owned her family. She lives in the black community known as Shake Rag with her husband; their daughter died when she was just a child.

Annie is the matriarch of the Coles family.  She raised five children; one son commited suicide very young and her two daughters are estranged from the family. 

Each woman is struggling with demons as they find the strength to endure hardship and tragedy.  
Gertrude makes a dangerous decision in order to give her daughters a better life, Retta frets over her husband's health because of a deal she made with God, and Annie grieves for her children all over again after learning a horrific secret about the husband she has stood by for so many years.

"...no matter how many times we think back to what might of been if we could've done one thing different, no matter what, we always come up the same. We live over and over in the happening only to be left with what's already done." *

This is the story of three very different women but what they have in common is motherhood.  Each carries strength and determination born in them when they became mothers and it spurs them on in amazing ways.

"I stood just like my girls stand now. There are days when I look at them and feel I am raising myself." *

I loved the dynamic between Gertrude, Retta, and Annie.  Though their social/class differences have separated them in the deep South, each woman has a particular strength that is able to the lift a weakness in the others and an unspoken but powerful bond is created.

Their stories are heartbreaking and yet I didn't want them to end.  Deb Spera's writing is stellar.  She's created a superb cast of characters that I will not soon forget and a timeless addition to Southern literature.  I have no doubt Call Your Daughter Home will receive a ton of well-deserved praise when it's released in the spring and I'll be in the front row to gush about it!

Many thanks Park Row and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!  Call Your Daughter Home is scheduled for release on June 11, 2019.

*Quotes included are from an advance readers copy and are subject to change upon final publication.

Call Your Daughter Home is an engrossing tale, weaving together three women's lives towards a course-altering crescendo. Retta, Gertrude, and Annie all take turns as narrator and together they represent three aspects of being a woman during this time in the South. Despite some faults within, the novel still left me with such a strong feeling to warrant a four star review, and the gist of the story was very well told. I'm still torn, but I'm willing to leave it for the main aspect and the way it was handled.

Born in South Carolina and, after my first six years, raised in North Carolina, I recognized so many voices and places in the creations and recreations from Spera. A branch of my own family landed in Charleston from Germany over 150 years ago, and I have a general knowledge of the area, its history, and its people. I could tell this was a personal tale that, though while told through a fictionalized plot, echoes from inspirations drawn on Spera's own family history and an area with which she is very familiar.

The beginning of this book was easy. The first 20% was intriguing and Spera struck a nice balance while writing between three narrators. However, once Spera goes beyond the general introduction and into what would be considered Act 2, the book becomes somewhat of a chore. There's very little dialogue here, and what dialogue there is—depending on the narrator—neglects to move the story along properly. I really feel that some of this could be improved through another round of edits by a new set of eyes.

For a good bit of the middle section, the tediousness of the read was akin to sitting in someone's living room while they go through a photo album and launch into a story for nearly every single photograph. There's just so much backstory, so much staging, and so much attempt at atmosphere through the dialect and tone. There are times when the women and those surrounding them feel like fully-fleshed out characters, but this is an uneven and mottled smattering throughout.

Along with the strained attempt at atmosphere, there are a few troublesome choices in characterization. Being from the postbellum but pre-WWII South, it is really difficult to not land on a stereotype or stock character—the huffy and pompous landowning white Southern man, for instance, is a stereotype because there were (and are) people just like this. Seemingly cut from a single type of fabric, these stock characters often make up at least some of the tertiary and minor characters—and depending on the story, are nearly unavoidable. Nonetheless, it is really bothersome to find a stock character in a main role.

Spera seems very aware of trying to properly portray the struggling times for a seemingly rich, old white woman and a poor white woman, as well a black woman during the Jim Crow era, which is where I think Spera's plans unintentionally go awry.

Retta, as I suspected throughout the story and as was confirmed in the Author's Note at the end, is partly based on someone Spera knew. Granted, in a lot of the dialogue (inner and with others), Retta does sound like a real person. That's where I can feel that she is an echo of someone known by the author, someone who said things "just like this" and so on. However, there is a strong and heady level of mysticism melded to Retta and her inner dialogue, especially. Quite frankly, she borders on the line of being magical and there to just assist the white people—which is really where it feels exactly as it is...a white woman writing about a black woman's experiences. Retta's characterization wobbles back and forth for the entire story between authentic and awkward. The complexity added to Retta with her backstory and her current interactions with her neighboring black community, helps to steady the scales somewhat—though never fully.

But...once Spera lands solidly into the third act, she comes back to a better balance of story and has a better feel for her characters. This all leads me to believe she started this idea for a story in the middle, with a general sense of three women who were to be based on women from her own life (past or present), and she simply tried to weave together too many loose threads into this tale. I do wish there had been more told from Annie's children's lives, but guessing at what occurred is probably sufficient for the story Spera wanted to tell. The redeeming quality to this story is the finale—it's one with some loose ends tied up nicely but not terribly neatly. I couldn't quite see the ending before it happened and I liked the unexpected details mixed in.

I just finished this book. I actually had to read a few of the previous reviews before I could figure out what I really thought about it. First I was confused because I thought I was requesting a book titled Call your Daughter Home but after downloading three different times and getting a book titled Alligator each time, I realized it was the same book. It’s about three strong women in the 1920’s in South Carolina. Annie is the matriarch of a somewhat wealthy white family named Coles. Their family bears a horrible secret that will surely destroy them should it come out. Gertrude is about as poor as poor can get. She is the mother of 4 girls. Her husband is an alcoholic who likes to hit on her when he’s drinking. Gert is also white. Retta is a first-generation freed black woman. She’s an older lady who believes in signs and non-traditional healings. All three of these ladies live hard, hard horrible lives in a small town. The characters are realistic and their story is well told. For me it was a little hard to keep them straight as they often overlapped and one chapter would be about Ms. Annie and the next about Retta. But it was a good book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy for my honest review.

Back to 1924,a South Carolina town where slaves have just been freed, cotton has been eaten by the weevils and families are struggling to survive.. Told by three very different women. Gertrude the mother of 4, lives with a no good abusive husband, she fears for her children, so decides to leave him, but not before planning for her husband to be killed by an alligator, a secret she has to live with. Gertrude doesn’t think she can manage 4 kids and drops one of at Retta’s house. Retta a beautiful character who will help all in need whether black or white, but is criticized by her black community for taking on the child. Annie is the rich lady who employs many of the local women and who originally owned Gertrude. All women live such different lives, but are strong and resilient and tell it like it was. Beautifully written and one I would certainly recommend .