It’s been seventeen years since Kathryn Stockett put out her debut novel The Help. Her second, The Calamity Club, is also set in Stockett’s native Mississippi, albeit about thirty years earlier, in 1933. The story follows two protagonists. The fist is Birdie Calhoun, a 24-year-old single woman traveling to Oxford to visit her sister Frances and her new husband. Birdie’s family is in danger of losing their home, so she has been sent to plead with her sister’s well-to-do new family, the Tartts, for some financial assistance. […]

While I’ve been waiting for Kathryn Stockett’s new novel to become available from my local library, I thought it would make sense to finally cross her first novel off my list. The Help was published to huge sales and general critical acclaim in 2009 before being adapted into an Oscar-winning film. It’s the story of Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelana young white woman in Jackson, Mississippi who wants to become a writer, and because of her love for the maid who essentially raised her, hits upon the […]