Sandra Dallas, Alice’s Tulips
During the Civil War, Alice’s husband, Charlie, fights for the Union. Alice is in charge of their Iowa farm where she lives with her mother-in-law. Alice’s Tulips is an epistolary novel made of Alice’s letters to her sister Lizzie.
Alice and her mother-in-law, who is very critical of her, both work hard on the farm, after the two men who helped them, a hired man and a former slave, leave them one after the other. In her spare time Alice loves quilting, and gathers with the local women to quilt for the soldiers, as part of the war effort. Despite the fact that, as a stranger from Fort Madison, people have difficulty accepting her (mostly Jennie Kate, a woman who has always been in love with Alice’s husband Charlie), they name her head of the quilting team, because she is so good at it…
As Alice starts what she thinks to be a harmless flirtation with Samuel Smead, her friend Nealie’s brother-in-law, rumors about them are started, that will only worsen when Alice is later suspected of murder…
Even if we can infer part of Lizzie’s life from her sister’s letters, the letters focus on Alice’s life: what we learn here is what life was during Civil War for those whom the books generally forget but who were also part of the war effort as they cheered their soldier-husbands with letters, raised money and sewed quilts to keep them warm. Alice’s Tulips also shows how a small town can be harsh toward its outsiders, and how rumor can destroy people’s reputations.
For Alice, this hard period spent waiting for her husband will be an opportunity to learn who her real and most loyal friends are. A murder mystery (though not very hard to figure out), a woman’s perspective on the Civil War, a treatise on quilting, Alice’s Tulips is a little bit of all that. Although it shares many similarities with The Persian Pickle Club, it is the main characters from The Diary of Mattie Spencer, Mattie and Luke, who are mentioned at the end, since The Diary of Mattie Spencer begins where Alice’s Tulips leaves off. As with her other novels, Sandra Dallas has managed to write a engrossing story full of lively characters…
Rating: 4/5
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