Spotlight on The Calamity Club
The Calamity Club by Kathleen Stockett (2026) is a fantastic read set in Mississippi during the Depression. I listened to it as an audiobook, narrated beautifully by Jenna Lamia and January LaVoy. The two brought the story to life in the voices of the narrators: Birdie, a single woman who lives on her parents’ farm, and Meg, an 11-year-old abandoned by her mother and living in the harsh environment of an orphanage.
The two encounter each other when Birdie travels from home to Oxford to visit her sister, Frances. Frances is the sibling who made a good match — married to banking scion Rory Tartt and living with him and his mother. Birdie’s visit is spurred by the needs of her parents at home; she’s going to ask Frances for money.
Frances volunteers at the orphanage when Meg lives, and Birdie and she meet and find a kinship together, each recognizing the intelligence, kindness, and scrappiness in the other. As Birdie spends time in Oxford, she realizes that Frances’s life is not as she thought.
[some spoilers ahead]
As the cracks begin to show and the financial hardship for all is revealed, a stranger arrives — Charlie, Meg’s mother. She wants desperately to be reunited with Meg but wants to do it in a way that means no one can separate them ever again, and that means she needs money.
Savvy Charlie proposes that she and Birdie open a dance club at the Tartt’s house, by which she means a brothel hidden under the guise of a dance club, taking advantage of the willing population of young men at the local university. Stockett introduces this plan and Birdie’s reaction to it so skillfully that readers who might initially be startled or even offended start to understand that prostitution was one of the only ways for women to become financially independent.
Meanwhile, Meg is adopted, despite her own expectations, by a wealthy (and unhappy) couple. She bonds with the husband, Tom, who is an aspiring writer. She doesn’t allow herself to think about the mother she misses and does her best to fit in to the new family.
The characters are engaging and often charming and funny; the story is suspenseful and satisfying. The writing will keep you reading/listening. I recommend this book to any who like historical fiction, stories centering women, and tales of those defying the odds.