It’s hard to know where to start with what I loved most about “The Calamity Club.”

I’m finally becoming a historical fiction fan. Books like “The Personal Librarian,”  “That Which Binds Us” and now “The Calamity Club” keep me reading this genre.

I listened to this audiobook – all 28 hours – in less than a week. Every spare moment normally reserved for political podcasts or news shows belonged to this book.

“The Calamity Club” is the story of strong women (determined matriarchs, spurned wives, spinsters, prostitutes and do-gooders) doing what’s got to be done as the Depression presses on, prohibition lurks in the shadows and families splinter.

While that description could make a reader think this is a sad, depressing story, it’s not. I loved it as a story of redemption and resilience told with humor and grace bringing complex characters to life.

The book flows between two initially unrelated stories – until they are not. The author deftly weaves these stories together without being obvious or trite about how the characters ultimately cross paths.

“The Calamity Club” has everything I love when I invest in a long read. It has rich, well-fleshed out primary characters who carry the story and believable secondary characters who support the story without confusing things. And best of all, the book treats us to hateful villains and lovable misguided souls with lines that frequently blur.

Sometimes I tend to focus more on the story than the writing itself when I absorb a book through my ears rather than my eyes. But this time, the writing kept demanding my attention.

Favorite passages abound like “The friendship had grown darker, but grown thicker like a roux” when describing the relationship that grew between two of the characters.

The sense of place in 1930s Oxford, Mississippi, takes a reader right to the Square, a place I know well and visit often. Vivid descriptions satisfied my mind’s eye (or ear) without slowing the story down.

As an audiobook lover, I can say the narrators of “The Calamity Club” could not have been better. The character of Meg, the young “orphaned” girl, comes to life with the narrator’s perfect intonation of a brave, smart and irreverent tween-aged Mississippi girl. Southern accents can often sound fake and affected to another Southerner’s ear. Meg is spot on!

This is one of those books that you finish and wish you hadn’t. But as much as I miss the story, I miss Meg’s sassy voice in my ear more.

Reba Hull Campbell is president of the Medway Group, a big word nerd and avid summertime reader. This is the first of (what she hopes will be) a dozen or so “Blink Book Reviews” for the summer. She’s challenging herself to keep them to 300-ish words so readers can skim them in a couple of blinks. Her choice of this book has a bit of a backstory to it. Read it here.

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