The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree by Susan Wittig Albert
To my cherished herb and gardening friends,
who encourage me to keep my hands in the dirt
and my fingers on the keyboard.
The Darling Dahlias and I send you our love.
Author’s Note Darling, Alabama, is a fictional town that is located in a real place: the beautiful wooded hills of southern Alabama, about seventy miles north of Mobile, west of Monroeville, and east of the Alabama River. If you’d like a map of the town, please visit the series website: www.darlingdahlias.com. You’ll find other items of interest there, including: historical background of the 1930s, the period in which the series takes place; Depression-era recipes and household tips; and information about Southern gardens. I’ll be adding new material frequently, so please bookmark the site and visit often.
A note about the language. When I was growing up in the 1940s, we lived on the outskirts of the African-American neighborhood in Danville, Illinois. At the time, my family called our neighbors and schoolmates “coloreds” or “colored folk” or “Negroes.” Later, when I was in graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, and took an active part in the Civil Rights movement, we called our friends “Blacks” and “African Americans”; “Negro” had become an ethnic slur. (I notice, though, that the 2010 census uses “Negro” because many older African Americans self-identify with the term.) This historical series includes language and social practices appropriate to the early 1930s in the rural South. These may be offensive to some readers. Thank you for understanding that no offense is intended.
Susan Wittig Albert
Dear Reader,
The author of this book has kindly asked us—the officers of the Darling Dahlias Garden Club—to write this letter to you. She wants us to let you know that we’ve read this story and agree with her description of what went on during the month of May 1930, when some things happened that shouldn’t have happened in any God-fearing town, much less in Darling, Alabama, which has 4 churches, 907 good Christian people (soon to be 908, because Mrs. Perkins is expecting any day now), and only a few Bad Apples.
Of course, in a story, it’s usually the Bad Apples who get all the attention, so we want to warn you not to pay too much attention to them. You should look instead at the way everybody else is behaving and doing what they ought to do, which is to help one another and follow the Golden Rule, even though (as a certain few would like to have you believe) it sometimes turns out that he who has the gold, rules. In this case, silver and gold, both, But we won’t say anything more about that, since we don’t want to spoil the story for you.
Anyway, we just wanted to let you know that we recommend this book because it’s true, most of it, And because the way the author has told it shows you how much the Dahlias care about our Darling and want to see things done right in our town, even when things are bad all over the country, with a lot of people out of work and the best help the Red Cross can offer is ten cents a day for food, Well, that’s enough of that, The Darling Dahlias always try to look on the bright side. As Aunt Hetty Little says, we keep our face to the sun so we can’t see the shadows, which is why we plant sunflowers and marigolds and cosmos in amongst the collards and sweet potatoes and okra in the garden, And speaking of gardens and such, we may not have just a whole lot extra, but we’re always willing to share what we have. So we’ve given the author some of our favorite recipes and tips for making whatever you’ve got go further, last longer, and taste better. She says she’ll put them at the end of the book. We hope they’ll help you, if times are as hard at your house as they are here in Darling, We hope you’ll keep looking on the bright side, too, And remember what we said about Bad Apples.
Elizabeth Lacy, president
Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary
Verna Tidwell, treasurer
The Darling Dahlias Club Roister, May 1930
OFFICERS
Miss Elizabeth Lacy, president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch.
Mrs. Ophelia Snow, vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.
Verna Tidwell, treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.
CLUB MEMBERS
Earlynne Biddle, married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.
Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth, Darling’s historian. Owns Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.
Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson, wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.
The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree
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 Confederate Rose
- 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