This book was different than I was expecting. This is more of a coming-of-age story of a young girl in the mid-1940s than it is about the wives of the tobacco industry. I really liked it. We find out a lot about the tobacco plantations and factories as well, but 15 year old Maddie Sykes is the main character. Maddie's father dies in the war and her mother, wanting to find a new husband to take care of her, drives Maddie to North Carolina and drops her off at her great aunt's home. Her aunt, Etta, doesn't know Maddie is coming of course, so everyone's life changes instantly. Etta is a well-respected seamstress for the tobacco wives. She custom makes all of their fancy dresses. Etta also re-fits - or adds special custom touches - to ready-made dresses as well for the "second-tier tobacco wives" (the wives of the men with lower management positions within the Bright Leaf tobacco industry.) Fortunately, Maddie also has a great passion for sewing (and fashion/designing, including sketching her own ideas) and has been Etta's "apprentice" for a few years already.
There are two key factors in this story. The first one is that with the war ending (it's 1946), the surviving men are returning to the US and wanting their jobs back. So the women who have been working since the men left for war are being fired from their jobs and told to go back home where they belong. (Barefoot and pregnant, so to speak.) The working women are also being paid less than their male counterparts for doing the same job. Maddie attends a meeting of women (black and white) one night because she believes in equality for women and the meeting is about the organization of a strike against Bright Leaf. Since she works for the top management of Bright Leaf though - and her involvement affects her aunt and her aunt's livelihood (being a seamstress for the tobacco wives), Maddie tries to keep her attendance at this meeting a secret.
The other important element of this story is the executives knowing the harmful effects of tobacco on people - especially pregnant woman (in this story) and their unborn babies - but they continue to market their mint-flavored cigarettes specifically to pregnant women and young mothers because the mint "soothes their nerves". Maddie discovers this information by accident and wants to make it public knowledge. She has seen all the underweight and premature babies at the local hospital. In addition to the that, the tobacco wife who takes her under her wing when Etta falls ill, has already had one miscarriage and is struggling with her current pregnancy.
These are tough issues for a teenager to deal with. Things are initially more black & white for Maddie, who wants to do the "right" thing on all counts. She finds out the hard way that life isn't that simple.
I really didn't know what was going to happen at the end. Maddie is certainly disappointed, but she eventually develops an understanding of how complicated life can be - and that a lot of people's lives are lived in a gray area.
Wendy's Rating: ****
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