This book follows several characters throughout the south during the Great Depression. Marigold, along and pregnant, leaves her baby in the woods while she searches for food. She is arrested, spends the night and jail and is near delirious from hunger when released. When she is finally able to return to the woods, her baby is missing. Paul and Vern, migrant workers, following screams into the woods where they find a baby with violet eyes. Despite putting an ad in the local paper, no one comes forth to claim her. Coot, a child preacher in the revival circuit, runs away after stealing thousands of dollars from his father, and the leader of the revival. Years pass, Marigold discovers that she has a talent for healing. Paul and Vern pick up a family abandoned by the road. Coot falls in with a tramp and struggles with the morality of a con-artist life.

I had some issues with the book. The characters seemed very stereotypical and weak. The women in particular seemed off - they were either Madonna's or Magdalene's, which is pretty frustrating. Everything came together in the end in a pretty predictable way. Overall, not a book I would re-read or recommend.

Sean Dietrich should be declared a National or, at the very least, a Southern treasure. He captures a time and place with such detail I felt like I had been transported back in time to a simpler but certainly not gentler world. For those of you who think the worries of our world are too much to handle, imagine the Great Depression with no safety net. Think of a time when life was so insular that tent revivals provided one of the few hopes you had for a better life. Then consider the men and women, boys and girls that Dietrich fashions for us, folks with little education or money but enormous hearts. This story will make your heart grow too. If you read and enjoyed Where the Heart Is, about the baby born at Walmart, you will love this story about decent people succeeded through luck, faith and love.

**I received a complimentary copy for consideration. All thoughts are 100% my own.

To be entirely honest, I'm not quite sure that Stars of Alabama was quite what I expected before I started reading... but what I got was so much better. It was truly one of the best novels I've read lately....and believe me, I've read a lot of them!

From the very start, I was transported through time and place to Alabama in the time of the Great Depression. Clearly, this is neither a time nor a place that I know of personally, but through his beautifully imagery and fantastic southern dialog, I felt as though I was there--- seeing and hearing it all perfectly. To me that ability to picture it all is truly the sign of a great story teller and Sean Dietrich certainly is that!

In Stars of Alabama, we follow the story of three quite different groups of characters. From the start, we can see how two of these stories are intertwined though they hadn't exactly met. I assumed that they would all cross paths at some point in the story, and in the meantime, I found myself rooting for each of these characters and wondering how their story would work out. The book was broken into short chapters (100 total to give you a better idea), which jumped back and forth from each group of characters. Normally, when a story jumps back and forth too often I find that it can be distracting and hard to follow, but personally I did not find that to be true for this one. The author did such a great job at establishing these characters that I found it was pretty easy to jump back and forth. I will say the time jumps (two separate ones) threw me a bit at first and I had to readjust my thinking to establish ages and such, but in the end I actually enjoyed getting to see these characters grow up and felt that that really added to the impact of the story.

I was a little surprised at the supernatural aspect of the story, just because I wasn't quite expecting it... but while it was an important part of the story, it wasn't the sole focus. I personally enjoy these more mystical stories anyway, but I don't feel like it's overwhelming to a point where others who might not still couldn't enjoy the story as well. More than anything, it truly was a story about the people- with the families and unlikely friendships along the way. Overall, it was a great read and one I would certainly recommend.

Star of Alabama is one of those books that reads like a hot summer afternoon in the deep south, slow, easy going and so good. You will find yourself completely lost in the storylines as they each take their own path. You will find yourself wondering how they will all work together and yet when they do you know that it is exactly the correct way. A perfect read for readers of Charles Martin or Richard Paul Evans.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A motley cast of well-written characters have commonalities that are linked together in the conclusion. I loved the book and cheered for the families that developed lovingly through need.

I really wanted to like this novel but I just didn't. The content was just too difficult for me with the incest and abuse among other content. These were dealt with respectfully but they're just not subjects I prefer in books. In addition the fantastical elements aren't really my preference. This book reminded me of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstances and would be a good recommendation for those that enjoyed that novel but aren't as sensitive to these trigger issues.

I found myself fully engaged with each of this story's three story lines and the unique, memorable characters whose stories were unfolding. I could feel the stories converging, but it was never obvious as to how they would finally intersect. As the characters traveled from the dust bowl of Kansas to the Gulf shores of Alabama, through the depression, a war, and peacetime, their stories drew ever closer. Stories of hard times, people who matter, putting aside the past, and creating a future; stories of right and wrong, and opportunities lost and found held my attention as if it were grasped in the author's hand.

The feelings generated as I read Stars of Alabama were reminiscent of those I had while reading The Secret Life of Bees and The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I would recommend this book to anyone who was touched by those. It is a book that will haunt your memory for years to come.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I really wanted to like this book, but the page and a half chapters that broke with each character perspective ultimately made this way too choppy and hard to connect with the characters.

This book takes place in Alabama during the Great Depression. I find this time period very interesting and jumped at the chance to read it based on the description. I think the writing is good and I might have had an easier time connecting if it wasn't for the above, but it also dragged for me. It took forever to get going and the few things I liked about it weren't enough to make me continue. I dreaded picking it up each time and nothing really made me that invested.

Ultimately, there are many other reviews out there that are highly positive so if this book sounds interesting to you, I would pick it up.

Thank you to Netgalley, Thomas Nelson and Sean Dietrich for the opportunity to read this and provide an honest review.

Review Date: 7/14/19
Publication Date: 7/9/19

This review has been submitted to Southern Literary Review, and when it appears I will post the link.

Stars of Alabama
By Sean Dietrich

Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (July 9, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785226370
• ISBN-13: 978-0785226376


Stars of Alabama (Thomas Nelson July 10, 2019) by Sean Dietrich is a beautiful novel, mesmerizing with its riches of complex characters, lush settings, and lyrical language. It is, quite simply, Southern Literature at its finest. Written with wisdom, insight, and with a captivating way with words, it is poignant and hopeful, engaging and vivid, and filled with people who might have died along the way except for the helping hands of others. Compassion is a dominant theme.

Dietrich’s dedication reveals something of the tone and the author. “I’d like to dedicate this book to the people of Alabama because it is about them. I hereby submit this work to the gnarled Alabama family tree, which I find myself a part of.”

The stories in Stars of Alabama focus on a diverse group of people moving toward each other, though their journeys will meander for years before coalescing on the shores of Mobile Bay in Alabama. While the story lines are initially distinct, they are linked by compassion and hope as the characters travel toward their common destiny.

Beginning in the Great Depression in the Deep South, the book opens with Paul, his dog Louisville, and Paul’s sidekick and best friend, Vern, “the tallest black man Paul had ever known,” hearing a cry in the woods. The dog tracks the sound and Paul and Vern find a violet-eyed, redhaired girl infant alone among the trees. They fall in love with the child at once.

Meanwhile, Marigold, the child’s poverty-stricken and forsaken mother, is arrested in town trying to steal food. She and her baby are starving, but the law is not kindly toward her. Many people are hungry in the Deep South at the time. She fears her baby will die alone in the woods while she is in jail—and but for Paul and Vern, the child probably would have.

Sweeping westward, the story then focuses on 14-year-old Coot, an orphan boy in the clutches of an unsavory and abusive tent-revivalist fake preacher. Coot, who has been preaching since he was seven, is the star attraction in the tent revival in the dry plains of Kansas, where the people often suffer from dust pneumonia.

The author has a great talent for capturing the times, the mood of the people, and locale, and he does so in his description of Kansas and the people who visit the tent revival, seeking some measure of hope.

"[Coot had] spent enough time on stages to know what his people were thinking. They were scared. That’s what was at the core of these people. There were terrified of the dust that hovered above the world. They drank the dust, ate the dust. The dust suffocated their children and wilted their food."

Moving back and forth between the stories and the main characters with beautifully choreographed organization, the story leaps from one set of down-and-out people to the next. Along the way, Paul and Vern, now the adopted parents of the redhaired baby, a child they name Ruth, also take in a widow and her two young children. Together, Paul, Vern, Ruth and the additional three become a family—not at once, but as they travel and work together, while taking care of each other they form the bonds of love and loyalty any blood family would envy. Their lives are hard, but they find work on farms in the South as they migrate.

Released from jail, Marigold finds her baby gone but doesn’t know the infant is safe thanks to the kindness of Paul and Vern. Ill and starving, Marigold is rescued by a group of prostitutes, but she never becomes a harlot, working instead as their maid.

Marigold discovers she has a rare and genuine gift, which brings her into grave danger near the climax of the story. Coot runs away from the abusive fake-preacher who holds him captive, and makes his way slowly toward a destiny with the other travelers in the book. He is trusting and naive, which brings him into danger also. Paul and Vern and their family also face a life and death situation as they seek shelter on the road to keep from freezing to death and are accosted by armed locals. Thus, there is action and adventure in the book, though the true focus is more on the characters, than the action.

While the plot and the characters are engaging and profoundly well done, the writing itself is a star attraction in Stars on Alabama. Sean Dietrich can turn a phrase like nobody’s business, and his words sing with sharp images and telling details. Consider these sentences: “[T]he old thing started burning oil and making strange noises that sounded like someone was hiding beneath the hood with a short-barrel shotgun.” Or, a series of sentences that captures the true love on the newly married: “He was handsome, yes. But he was more than that. He was the rest of her life.”

Thomas Nelson, the publisher, is the Christian arm of HarperCollins. And the Christian themes of love, compassion, hope and caring for each other ring strong in the book, though it is not a preachy book by any means. There is an evil fake preacher balanced by a genuine good preacher, but it isn’t the preachers themselves which support the theology of the book. Rather, it is Paul and Vern saving a starving baby, then adopting a whole family of lost and hunger when they are on the brink of starvation themselves. It’s Marigold with her rare gift, using it for good to help lonely, scared people instead of seeking a profit from it. And it’s Coot, opening his heart to the reality of love and goodness when his childhood nearly lead him down a jaded, criminal path instead.

In the end, this is a fine, fine story about compassion. Well worth reading, it is a book that will inspire hope.

The author, Sean Dietrich, is a columnist, novelist, and creator of the blog, podcast, and radio show “Sean of the South.” His essays and articles have appeared in Southern Living, The Good Grit, South Magazine, the Bitter Southerner, ALFA Alabama Farmer's Magazine, Alabama Living, and several Southern newspapers. He is also the author of seven books.

This book was really hard to get into with the short choppy chapters and it's many characters. I liked that Vern and Paul were very caring characters and a little quirky. The story of depression is such a hard subject with so many sad stories. This was just an okay book for me.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

A deeply moving and inspirational read. Solid choice for those seeking community-driven stories, novels surrounding the Great Depression or Southern Historical Fiction in general

Stars of Alabama is an extraordinary visit back to the Alabama of the 1920s, 1930s after their world was changed by the cotton-destroying boll weevil and the stock market crash on Wall Street when parents helplessly watched their hungry children die and adults were held hostage by the few paying jobs that were available. But southerners are very strong people. And Sean Dietrich tells this wonderful story with heart and hope and laughter to counter the tears.

We have a full arsenal of people to tell this story. Religious Revivalists both honorable and crooked, to keep the heart and hope up in the afflicted. Shopkeepers and farmers and millers and whore house madams who offered the only employment. Kids just starting out in this scary world, and old geezers still hanging on. Dogs. Lots of dogs in these doings.

Stars of Alabama is a historical novel you can't put down. It is a book I am honored to recommend to friends and family. Be ready to laugh and cry, and assign important chores to someone else before you settle down with this book. It's an all-nighter. Sean Dietrich is an author I will follow.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Sean Dietrich, and publisher Thomas Nelson. 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.
Pub date July 9, 2019
Reviewed July 6, 2019, at Goodreads and Netgalley.

This is a well written book but I couldn't connect with the story or the characters so I had to put it down. I'm certain there are many other people that will love this book, unfortunately I'm not one of them. I give the book three stars because of the language.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

During the Great Depression a fifteen year old girl becomes pregnant, has her baby and leaves her in the forest to go look for food, when she returns her baby is gone.
This novel brings together a cast of characters that I really liked, Vern and Paul who find the baby and care for her, a young mother and her children who are left desolate that also end up traveling with Vern and Paul... they all become a family, and it’s a struggle, but there’s lots of love.
There is also another story line involving church revivals and healings, and other characters who become entwined together.
I enjoyed the characters but the story didn’t really keep me very interested.

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas Nelson!

Multiple story lines and characters eventually converge in this lovely novel of America during the Great Depression. As bad as things were- and they were very bad- these people will cheer you. The chapters are short and at first it may seem as though things aren't cohesive but trust me, they will all link up in, of course, Alabama. This is one where you might pick a character in particular (I especially liked Marigold) but then you'll realize how one can't exist without another. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good positive read.

I absolutely cannot give this book enough stars - it is FANTASTIC!!! You will fall in love with all the endearing characters and how all their lives end up blending together for an unforgettable novel!

This story was full of colorful characters, but I particularly enjoyed Marigold’s and Ruth’s story the most. This was a different read for me and on the whole it was average. The healings and revivals definitely kept my interest throughout. Thank you Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

STARS OF ALABAMA by Sean Dietrich is a beautifully-written and moving story of unlikely friendships and unusual “families” beginning during the Depression era. Alternating between the points of view of the wonderfully-portrayed characters, their difficult lives and significant challenges are revealed with honesty, empathy and compassion. When they all eventually make their way to Alabama, we finally see how their lives are interwoven. The writing is vivid and evocative. I felt like I was right there with all of the memorable characters. The dialogue was perfectly authentic and drew me right in. I will not soon forget this compelling and uplifting story with its kind-hearted characters and message of hope in the face of adversity and I highly recommend it! Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the complimentary early copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

The best way to describe this book is that it is a menagerie of stories following the lives of multiple characters. Coot is the first one we meet, a child prodigy spiritual speaker, his buddy Blake and then Joe. Intertwine the story of Marigold, a young girl disgraced and abandoned by her family due to a pregnancy when she was only 15, and how she struggles through life. Lastly, we spend time with Paul, Vern and Ruth, before and after they adopt a down and out family consisting of two small children and an ailing mother.
Sometimes I felt it was hard to stay up with this large cast of characters. I do feel the author did a nice wrap up in the final chapters when finally pulling all the characters together. Unfortunately, I found this as a so-so book, I just did not feel fully connected to any of the characters. I admired Paul and Vern for their generosity and compassion in helping the unfortunate, they were two old guys with really big hearts and a love for dogs.
This was not a bad book; it just wasn’t a great book.
This one comes in with 3***’s. I thank Thomas Nelson and Net Galley for allowing me the privilege of reading this book for my honest review.