The Calamity Society - Historical Women's Fiction (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798235321823)

I arrived in Prosper, Mississippi, in 1954 with a husband the congregation adored and a suitcase I never unpacked.

Tolliver was magnificent in the pulpit. Nobody knew about the kitchen version of him. The version with the even voice and the open hand. Nobody knew, because making sure nobody knew was my full-time job.

Then I found the women in the church basement. They met behind a locked door with a leather ledger, a flask of bourbon, and secrets that would have burned the town down. They documented what their husbands did. They hid money in coffee cans. They told stories about cabinet doors that nobody believed.

I sat in their circle as the preacher's wife who helped.

I did not tell them I needed the circle as much as they did. I did not tell them about the letters hidden under my mattress from a woman who knew exactly what my husband's hands could do. I did not tell them about the shoe box filling with dates and descriptions in the back of my closet.

They called themselves the Calamity Society. And before it was over, every woman in that basement would have to decide what she was willing to risk for the only thing any of us had left.

The truth.