CALL YOUR DAUGHTER
HOME by Deb Serpa is a work of historical fiction set amidst the
rural poverty and segregated society of 1924 South Carolina. Three women share
the storytelling: Gertrude Pardee, Oretta Bootles, and Annie Coles. Gertrude,
forced to marry as a teen, has four young daughters and an often drunk and
abusive husband. She can barely afford
to feed the family until she is offered a job at the Sewing Circle. That business is owned by Annie through her
own family legacy, although her husband Edwin is an influential plantation
owner dealing with the cotton crop’s destruction by the boll weevil and trying
to make money by converting to tobacco. Retta lives in Shake Rag, with her ailing
husband and other former slaves or their descendants. She has long worked as
housekeeper for Miss Annie’s family and is a kind soul who often helps others,
including Gertrude and her girls. CALL
YOUR DAUGHTER HOME is filled with conflict between family members,
especially mothers and daughters. There are questions of morality, faith,
guilt, and retribution which are adeptly handled and woven throughout the
story. At one point, Preacher quotes Ephesians 6:11, “put on the whole armor of
God” in order to stand “against spiritual wickedness in high places.” In
addition, these women, two of whom have lost children, have to rely on their
own mothers’ words (“Mama used to say if you don’t ask for help, nobody will
know how to give it”) and the concern they develop for each other. Each experiences
both physical and emotional pain and questions her own abilities, as expressed
in reflections like: “I wasn’t a good mother, that much is fact, but I was the
only kind I knew how to be” or “I can’t see what is to come. … I fear I will
stumble over the edge without knowing, and tumble to the sharp rocks below, too
late to save my own soul.” In a note on “A Bit of Background,” Serpa explains how
her own grandmother and great-grandmother influenced this book, including
details like the peach cobbler recipe. She says that she was “humbled and
inspired by the ferocity of their motherhood.” Book group members, especially readers
of titles like Delia Owens' Where the
Crawdads Sing or Sue Monk Kidd's The
Secret Life of Bees, will certainly empathize with the characters in Serpa’s
debut novel which was a LibraryReads selection in June. This title might work for Junior Theme; Booklist recommended CALL YOUR DAUGHTER HOME for
teens, too, due to the “complicated mother-daughter relationships.”
