The Calamity Club is a highly engaging historical fiction novel set in Mississippi during the Great Depression. Well-developed characters, two creative story lines, frequent humor, and womanly resilience and friendship make The Calamity Club a winner worth every minute of the almost 29 hours I spent listening to it (it’s long!).

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Here’s a quick (hopefully) summary of The Calamity Club.

Birdie Calhoun is a strong and outspoken woman that has to swallow crow and travel to Oxford, Mississippi to ask her sister, Francis, for financial help for her, her mother, and grandmother. It’s the height of the Great Depression when so many people are struggling.

Francis has been stonewalling her family since her engagement and marriage to a wealthy member of the Oxford upper crust. Letters to her go unanswered, forcing Birdie to leave her family home and her bookkeeping job to visit Francis in person.

Once we meet Francis, we understand her actions. She’s shallow and vacuous, and doesn’t want the lies she told about her background revealed. She is mostly concerned about shopping and social status, the complete opposite of practical, compassionate Birdie.

At least one good thing comes out of Francis’s social climbing efforts – she volunteers at a local girls’ orphanage because the chairwoman is at the top of the Oxford social food chain. She recruits Birdie to help straighten out the orphanage’s books.

Birdie has to work on the ledgers in a moldy office, where she encounters 11-year-old Megan. Meg spends her days in the disgusting room after being kicked out of school for drawing a version of the last supper in which Jesus is flipping off Judas (is it sacrilegious to think that’s hilarious?). Anyway, Meg is the star of the second story line.

I’ll speed this up.

Turns out Francis’s wealth and financial security was a house of cards. Bill collectors are becoming impatient, and they are in danger of losing the house. There’s no money for Birdie. There isn’t even money for the overdue phone bill.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Everyone needs money, including a woman Birdie meets named Charlie. The two cook up a high-potential money-making scheme that could land them in jail. Still, the financial upside is too good to pass up, so they grit their teeth and move forward with the plan.

At the same time, Meg, who was considered unadoptable due to her age, is adopted by a wealthy couple. This launches an odyssey for her that ultimately results in the two story lines converging again.

The Calamity Club is so good! Despite its great length, I was never bored and never felt my engagement waning. It is entertaining from beginning to end.

The characters are so well written. The protagonists are extremely likeable, and the antagonists are suitably villainous. Birdie is an admirable woman, and I liked her common sense and moral compass. She is unafraid to speak up when she thinks people aren’t being treated fairly. Meg is also admirable, but in a different way. Her unfiltered thoughts are often hilarious, and I liked her budding wisdom.

As for the bad characters, they were really bad or, in Francis’s case, over the top annoying. The reader of the audio version of The Calamity Club did an especially good job making her so annoying that she might just be one of my all-time least favorite characters. There’s also the chairwoman of the orphanage, who takes evil and hypocrisy to a new level.

The setting and time period of The Calamity Club are deeply immersive. The story takes place in 1930’s Mississippi, so there are plenty of social issues regarding blacks, women, the poor, and even orphans. And because it takes place during the Great Depression, the scarcity of money and resources is a constant theme, so much so that after listening to several hours of the book, I sometimes had to remind myself that my family is not destitute.

A lively plot also contributed to my satisfaction with The Calamity Club. There’s rarely a dull moment and plenty of suspense towards the end when the women are conducting their illegal business. There’s even a sweet romance.

I strongly recommend The Calamity Club to historical fiction fans who aren’t afraid of entering into a long-term commitment with a book. And if you opt for the audio version, you’re in for an even bigger treat. The two narrators are fantastic!

If you’ve read The Calamity Club, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And for another terrific Kathryn Stockett novel, check out my review of The Help.