The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
Susan Wittig Albert
For gardeners everywhere, who tend their plants with courage, determination, and faith in a green and abundant future.
The Darling Dahlias and I are growing with you.
Author’s Note
I am a fan of historical novels. I very much enjoyed working with my husband Bill on the Robin Paige Victorian series, researching the way people lived in England at the turn of the twentieth century. I also enjoyed writing the eight books in the Cottage Tales series, about the life and times of author-illustrator Beatrix Potter. The books were set in 1905–1913, in the English Lake District.
And now, with the Darling Dahlias, I have an opportunity to visit the American South in the 1930s. I’m fascinated by the period, and by a town that’s small enough to walk wherever you want to go; where the local grocery and the Saturday farmers’ market offer fresh vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, and honey produced by local growers; and where neighbors gossip over the back fence and listen in on the party line. Movies have just learned to talk, and barnstorming pilots are an amazing family entertainment. Kids spend Saturday mornings hoeing the garden and Saturday afternoons at the swimming hole or dangling a fishing hook in the river. This is a very different world from the one you and I live in, and I love being able to explore its nooks and crannies.
But it wasn’t Eden. The Great Depression meant that breadwinners were thrown out of work and children went hungry. Banks and businesses failed, families lost homes, farmers lost farms and livestock, and many lost hope. Widespread drought turned the Plains wheat country into a dustbowl and dried up great swathes of the South’s most productive land. Prohibition was in force until 1933, and bootlegging was the regional (if not the national) sport, with all the criminal activity it invited. Huey P. Long and Father Charles Coughlin preached a passionate populism that inspired the poor, tempted the middle class, and terrified the rich. Racism, both conscious and unconscious, open and secret, was rampant.
My mother remembered those turbulent years as the “hard times,” and as a child, I listened open-mouthed to her stories of the challenges she faced. But she lived through those years because she believed that there could be better days ahead—as long as people worked hard, had faith, and respected and cared for one another. That’s the spirit I want to reflect in these books: the belief in the enduring values of hard work, deep faith, respect, caring, and community.
I hope you find it as reassuring as I do.
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A word about language. To write truthfully about the rural South in the 1930s requires the use of images and language that may be offensive to some readers—especially the terms colored, colored folk, and Negro when they refer to African Americans. Thank you for understanding that I mean no offense.
Susan Wittig Albert
Bertram, Texas
May, 1931
The Darling Dahlias Clubhouse and Gardens
302 Camellia Street
Darling, Alabama
Dear Reader,
Well. It looks like we’re going to get another book written about us!
Which is not only a wonderful surprise, but a very good thing, in our opinion, because the story that Mrs. Albert is writing is full of some true and surprising events that many folks (especially Yankees) don’t know anything about. In fact, when she asked us what she should call her book, we suggested The Confederate Rose, because . . . well, you’ll see why as you get into the story.
But before you begin, we should tell you that here in the South, we lay proud claim to two Confederate roses. One is the flower that we grow in our gardens, which (as Miss Rogers will be happy to tell you) is more properly called by its real name, Hibiscus mutabilis. The other is the Confederate Rose, our very own Southern spy, who helped the boys in gray defeat the boys in blue at the Battle of Bull Run in 1861.
Now, we have to confess that some of us were surprised to learn about this Confederate Rose. And all of us were even more surprised when we discovered that our dear little Darling is home to the granddaughter of the Confederate Rose, an astonishing fact that was turned up by Mr. Charles Dickens, the editor and publisher of the Darling Dispatch, when he was doing research. But now we know (and so will you, by the time you’ve finished the story), and we can lay proud claim to that, as well.
The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose
Susan Wittig Albert's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Silent Cry
- The Sins of the Wolf
- The Dark Assassin
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- The Sheen of the Silk
- The Twisted Root
- The Lost Symbol
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- After the Darkness
- The Best Laid Plans
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Other Side of Me
- The Sands of Time
- The Sky Is Falling
- The Stars Shine Down
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- The First Lie
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- The Good Girls
- The Heiresses
- The Perfectionists
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- The Lies That Bind
- Ripped From the Pages
- The Book Stops Here
- The New Neighbor
- A Cry in the Night
- The Phoenix Encounter
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- The Perfect Victim
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- The Fixer
- The Good Girl
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- The Devil's Bones
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- The Inquisitor's Key
- The Girl in the Woods
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- The Silenced
- The Hexed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Forever
- The Night Is Watching
- In the Dark
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Cursed
- The Dead Play On
- The Forgotten (Krewe of Hunters)
- Under the Gun
- The Paris Architect: A Novel
- The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush
- Always the Vampire
- The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
- The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies
- The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star
- The Doll's House
- The Garden of Darkness
- The Creeping
- The Killing Hour
- The Long Way Home
- Defend and Betray
- Madonna and Corpse
- Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow
- Bone Island 02 - Ghost Night
- Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon
- Last Vampire Standing