Sandra Dallas is one of my favorite authors so I was ready to enjoy THE PERSIAN PICKLE CLUB from the beginning. I think that every book of hers that I have read involves quilting in some way and this story revolves around a group of women who have bonded over their quilting frames.
Queenie Bean and her husband Grover are farmers in Harveyville, Kansas. The Great Depression has hit the country and it has been particularly hard on the farmers of the Midwest. The Beans have it a little better than some, but still life is a struggle.
Queenie is part of a quilting group that gathers to share their love of quilting as well as to improve their minds, exchange gossip and support and protect each other during rough times.
Grover’s best friend returns to the farming community with his new wife, Rita. Rita is definitely “Big Town” and wants to become a famous news reporter. She feels that her big opportunity has arrived when a missing husband of one of the quilting ladies is found buried in a shallow grave by a remote country road.
However, instead of the community wanting the murder solved, everyone wants the subject to just go away. In the process we learn about farm life in the 1930’s, secrets of quilting, and the importance of loyal friends.
As I have said, I love Sandra Dallas as an author. Her books appear to be light and an easy read with touches of homespun humor. They are all of these things, but watch out for characters who are less than perfect, a plot twist that involves murder, some infidelities, babies born out of wedlock (shocking in the 1930’s) and some grittier, real life scenes.
It is easy to identify with the characters in a Sandra Dallas novel. She has a talent for expressing the fears and insecurities that women feel. Whether the book is True Sisters, about the women of the Church of Latter Day Saints making their way to Salt Lake or the girls who work in a bordello in The Chili Queen, she gives us women that we know. I am very happy that I still have several of her novels to read.
P.S. For those of you who do not quilt, a Persian Pickle is an old term for a paisley print fabric.
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