Susan Albert: The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

The second book in the Darling Dahlias series, 2011

I love writing about real places. The little town that is the setting for this series is fictional, but it is located in a very real place: in southern Alabama, in the wooded hills west of Monroeville and east of the Alabama River, about seventy miles north of Mobile. You will find a map of Darling on the series website: www.darlingdahlias.com. You will also find other items of interest there, including: Depression-era recipes and household tips, some historical background of the 1930s (the period in which the series takes place), and information about Southern gardens. I’ll be adding new material frequently, so please bookmark the site and visit often.

I also love language, and in this series, as in all my books, I’ve tried to use the language of the people and their times. This historical series includes language and social practices appropriate to the early 1930s in the rural South. For instance, the characters use the terms “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they refer to African Americans, and the attitudes of white people toward their black fellow citizens reflect the conscious and unconscious racism of the times. To write truthfully about this time and place requires the use of language and ideas that may be offensive to some readers. Thank you for understanding that I intend no offense.

As I work on these books, I especially find myself loving the spirit of the times. The 1930s were terribly difficult years, because so many people were facing daunting challenges that resemble some of the economic challenges we face today. But people didn’t lose hope. They had faith in themselves, in their families, and in their communities, and they did whatever they could to help themselves. I am touched by this spirit as I read the newspapers and books published in those years, and as I remember my mother and my aunts talking about the “tough times” they lived through in the decade before I was born. Ordinary people were tough and resilient enough to weather extraordinary challenge, and I hope to represent that spirit in these books.

Susan Wittig Albert

November 1, 1930

Darling, Alabama

Dear Reader,

When the author of The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree asked us if she could write a second book about us, we were thrilled. It’s not every garden club that gets a book written about it, much less two books! But we agreed because we liked the way Mrs. Albert gave you all the ins and outs of what happened in The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree . Mr. Dickens naturally didn’t print the full story in the Dispatch, so lots of people in town didn’t know all the details and were very surprised when they found out. In fact, some people were so surprised that they tried to boycott the book when Mr. Mann put a stack of them out for sale in front of the Mercantile, and Mrs. Lima was heard to say that she didn’t know how she was going to hold up her head in this community, now that everybody knew what had gone on in the back room at Lima’s Drugs. We’re sorry about that, but we do believe that Mr. Lima will toe the straight and narrow from here on out, and that Mrs. Lima won’t have a thing to fret about. Everybody understands that people make mistakes. Live and learn, as the old folks say.

Anyway, when Mrs. Albert learned that we were in the middle of another mystery and asked us if she could look over our shoulders and write everything down as it happened, we thought it was a good idea. Several of us were especially wondering about the pair of ladies who had moved into Miss Hamer’s house on Camellia Street, the one with all the naked ladies in the front yard. And if you don’t know what naked ladies are, well, you can read this book and find out. We won’t tell you anything more about that, since we don’t want to spoil the story for you.

And it’s true that we need stories these days, don’t you think? Times have been hard since the Crash, people are out of work all over the country, and it seems like too many of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel. But stories-even when they include a few folks who don’t measure up by the Golden Rule-help us to forget our troubles for a little while and learn something about people and the silly (and sometimes dangerous) things they do.

So we hope this story brightens your day a little. And speaking of bright, Aunt Hetty Little wants us to remind you of something we have said before but which bears saying again. We keep our faces to the sun so we can’t see the shadows, which is why we plant sunflowers and marigolds and cosmos in amongst the collards and sweet potatoes and okra in our gardens.

We hope you will, too.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Lacy, president, The Darling Dahlias

Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary

Verna Tidwell, treasurer

OFFICERS

Miss Elizabeth Lacy,president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch .

Mrs. Ophelia Snow,vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.

Verna Tidwell,treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.

CLUB MEMBERS

Earlynne Biddle.Married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant. A rose fancier.

Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth,Darling’s historian. Owner and proprietor of Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.

Mrs. George E. Pickett (Voleen) Johnson,wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.

Mildred Kilgore.A collector of camellias, Mildred is married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors, and lives near the Cypress Country Club.

Aunt Hetty Little,oldest member of the club, town matriarch, and lover of gladiolas.

Myra May Mosswell,owner of the Darling Diner and an operator in the Darling Telephone Exchange. Lives in the flat over the diner. Has a vegetable garden.

Lucy Murphy,the newest member of the club. Lucy is married to Ralph Murphy and lives on a small farm on Jericho Road. Just planted a peach orchard.

Miss Dorothy Rogers,Darling’s librarian. Miss Rogers knows the Latin name of every plant and insists that everybody else does, too. Lives in Magnolia Manor. Beulah Trivette,artistically talented owner/operator of Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where small groups of Dahlias gather almost every day. Loves cabbage roses and other big, floppy flowers.

Alice Ann Walker,bank cashier. Her husband, Arnold, is disabled. Loves spring-flowering bulbs.

Elizabeth Lacy opened the small shed behind the Dahlias’ clubhouse and stowed the rakes, hoes, and spades inside. She closed the door, took off her floppy-brimmed hat, and turned to Verna Tidwell.

“The garden looks really swell, don’t you think?” she said, surveying the result of the afternoon’s hard work.