A Tiny Piece of Blue -by Charlotte Whitney
Reviewed by Kathryn Haueisen
Reviews & Interviews features reviews of books by, for, and about women published by independent presses and interviews of award-winning women authors. It is one of several stacks published by Her Stories, the Substack of Story Circle Network. Go here to choose which ones you’d like to receive.
Charlotte Whitney skillfully takes us back to rural Michigan during the Great Depression in A Tiny Piece of Blue. Desperate families pass on their children to extended family to feed, or sell them or abandon them. Whitney gives the reader a heart-tugging account of one desperate farmer who objects to his wife’s generosity toward a destitute young teen neighbor. Silstice Trayson becomes homeless when her family scatters, leaving her to fend for herself. The characters manage to survive one desperate situation after another in an time when a single dollar could make the difference between shelter and food or homelessness and hunger. Obtaining that dollar required creativity and sometimes deception.
Whitney paints a realistic portrait of the best and worse people offer one another when times are hard and resources are scarce. Chapter by chapter, we watch the resilient Silstice smooth the rough edges of her reluctant benefactor, Vernon Goetz. They are brought together through his wife, Edna, who quietly resists him by finding ways around his stubborn refusal to do right by their desperate neighbor.
Readers will be impressed with the girl’s determination to beat the odds stacked high against her. There seems to be nothing this little woman cannot do when she sets her mind to it. She is helped in her efforts by an older sister living off the reluctant charity of her friend’s parents. Silstice is deterred in her efforts by the local librarian, whose demeanor switches from friendly and helpful to mean and dangerous faster than you can turn a page in a book.
For those raised by parents and grandparents who struggled through the Great Depression, this book will confirm their stories of sacrifices and struggles. For those with little knowledge about how our food gets from the farm to our tables, this story gives readers a detailed glimpse of the hard and risky business behind our daily bread. For those who have been spared knowing much about the black market of trafficking children, this will show the depravity of those willing to use children as a commodity.
All in all, A Tiny Piece of Blue is a beautiful piece of verbal artwork, with vivid descriptions of the characters, the places, and the desperate actions of desperate people. There are enough plot turns and twists to keep the reader turning pages. A couple of scenes at the county fair seemed a little far-fetched even for fiction, but they worked to keep the plot moving and the suspense building.
I thoroughly enjoyed Whitney’s story and highly recommend it to others who enjoy reading about history and people who face tragedy with tenacity.
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Having grown up on a farm in Michigan, author Charlotte Whitney was active in the local sewing, baking, and beef 4-H clubs. She exhibited at the Calhoun County Fair, which is part of the setting for her current book. She spent much of her career at the University of Michigan, receiving the prestigious Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts Program. She now lives in Arizona with her husband, where she enjoys hiking, bicycling, and yoga. She is the author of two nonfiction books, a romance novel, and two previous prize-winning historical novels. Visit her website.
Reviewer Kathryn Haueisen writes books that cover life’s little and not-so-little challenges including relocation, natural disaster, changing marital status, and the tragedies and triumphs of the people we call the Pilgrims. I blog regularly to promote good people doing great things and publish articles and books when I can. Published books: Married & Mobile, A Ready Hope, 40-Day Journey with Kathleen Norris, Asunder, Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures and Mary Brewster’s Love Life: Matriarch of the Mayflower. More information at HowWiseThen.com.
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Great review