The story opens in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933, when the Depression has stripped away any polite fiction that security is distributed according to merit. Eleven-year- old Meg Lefleur has spent two years at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum after her mother left her there on Christmas Eve. Classified among the older girls whom prospective parents are unlikely to choose, Meg protects herself with intelligence, suspicion and a refus- al to believe she has been permanently abandoned. She is funny without becoming precocious for the conve- nience of the reader, and her determination gives the sprawling novel its strongest pulse. Birdie Calhoun arrives in Oxford carrying a differ- ent variety of desperation. Unmarried, outspoken and skilled with numbers, she hopes her socially successful sister Frances will help the family Birdie has been sup- porting. Frances has acquired a wealthy husband and a carefully arranged life, but the household proves far less secure than its polished exterior suggests. Birdie’s bookkeeping eventually brings her into the affairs of the orphanage and into Meg’s orbit, where ledgers re- veal that institutions can conceal cruelty as efficiently as families conceal debt. Respectable people are often protected from the consequences of far worse decisions. Charlie, a resourceful woman with few remaining op- tions, completes the novel’s central alliance. Her pro- posed solution to their problems is audacious, morally complicated and entertaining enough that readers may find themselves supporting conduct they would firm- ly condemn at a neighborhood association meeting. Stockett allows the women to be generous, exasperat- ing, frightened and opportunistic, sometimes within the same conversation. Their friendship is not senti- mental decoration; it is the practical arrangement that makes survival possible when every official system has failed them. Beneath the adventure lies a disturbing account of how poor and unconventional women were judged by au- thorities empowered to decide who was fit to become a mother. Stockett incorporates the era’s eugenics move-
ment and forced sterilization policies without turning the novel into a history lecture. The facts are horrifying precisely because they enter through the lives of char- acters readers have come to know, including girls who understand that being labeled troublesome can have consequences far beyond an afternoon in the matron’s office. At more than 650 pages, The Calamity Club occasion- ally carries one complication too many, and its final convergence requires several pieces to fall into place with suspicious efficiency. Stockett’s characters, howev- er, are strong enough to pull the machinery along. Meg provides the courage, Birdie the moral argument and Charlie the nerve, while the women surrounding them form a community built from necessity rather than so- cial approval. The Calamity Club is historical fiction with a generous appetite for plot, humor and righteous troublemaking. It acknowledges that desperation does not always pro- duce noble decisions and that respectable people are often protected from the consequences of far worse ones. Stockett has written a substantial, spirited novel about women denied conventional power who become remarkably inventive once they stop waiting for per- mission.
Denise Copeland and Buffey Cassidy are co-presidents of the Cambridge Book Club, a distinguished literary society in Martin County. They guide the club through thoughtful explorations of numerous works each year and host local authors to celebrate literature, cultivate community, and savor the enduring pleasures of reading.
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