The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle

The Darling Dahlias have been among my favorites and this current book keeps them at the top of my list. In The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle by Susan Wittig Albert, the residents of Darling, Alabama, are competing in a Christmas jigsaw puzzle contest.

As usual there is much going on: Earlynne Biddle and Mildred Kilgore are planning to open a bakery. The only problem is neither of them knows how to bake bread. They can bake all sorts of pastries and sweets, but not bread. They both discover their inability to bake two days before the bakery is set to open.
\
Now the residents of Darling can buy Wonder Bread, but it's days old and even though it comes in evenly sliced loafs, fresh bread is still better. Earlynne and Mildred are surprised by the generosity of their neighbors.

Liz Lacy is still working part-time for attorney Benton Moseley

when she receives a strange phone call. Someone is trying to find a little girl about three years old who disappeared at birth. The caller threatens legal action if the little girl is not surrendered. Liz thinks this little girl sounds like Cupcake, daughter of Violet Sims and Myra May Mosswell, but she wants to wait until she talks to Mr. Moseley before she does anything.

There are other surprises for the residents of Darling as they prepare for the Puzzle Challenge and Liz gets the biggest surprise of all.

Another delightful treat about the people of Darling showing how they manage their lives in a positive manner despite the ups and downs of life in the 1930s.

Purchase link

The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover

It's 1934 and the country is still in the midst of the Depression. In The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover by Susan Wittig Albert, the people of Darling, Alabama, are doing the best they can with what little they have.

Everyone has a vegetable garden so fresh veggies are always available and what is not used at home is donated to the Darling Blessing Box. No one has an extra money except a few people like the Whitworths, but Whit is not spending any money even on the businesses in which he is a partner. This includes the Darling Telephone Exchange which has outgrown its old switchboard causing phone problems throughout Darling.

It's time for the annual Dixie Championship for Barbershop Quartets and the Lucky Clovers are planning to compete. Unfortunately two of their members encounter bad luck - Martin Ewing has pimples on his throat and he cannot sing and Whit Whitworth winds up dead in a car accident.

The Dahlias rush in the console the widow, but discover she was planning to divorce Whit over

money problems. There are other suspects as well because Whit was a limited partner in many businesses, but was unwilling to invest in them, making the other partners angry. Liz Lacy who works for attorney Mr. Moseley is privy to confidential client information and knows Mrs.Whitworth was planning to divorce him.

Lots of suspects as usual but the real charm of these books is the account of life in 1934. The little glimpses into the life of everyday people during the Depression, how they coped with very little and how they looked forward to the New Deal is a study in history. I'm always stunned by the prices of food - tuna fish 10 cents a can (too expensive to buy for cats), a slice of pie 15 cents and a cup of coffee 5 cents. A new car costs $1,500, but the average income was $30 a week.

I love these books and the characters seem so authentic.

The Darling Dahlias

Cozy mysteries have a long and storied history with settings all over the world and in many different decades. Susan Wittig Albert's The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady transports the reader back to 1934. Times were hard in Darling, Alabama, and gardens were not just used to grow pretty flowers. Families subsisted on the vegetables they could produce and sell or trade.

Club president Liz Lacy has always loved the Eleven O'Clocks, a white blossom that opens when the sun shines directly on then, hence the Eleven O'Clock name. But someone in town has that same nickname. Rona Jean Hancock, a telephone switchboard operator, (if your think the NSA intrudes on your privacy, switchboard operators would put them to shame with what they know) earned her nickname because she finished her shift at eleven o'clock in the evening.

Rona Jean is also known for her somewhat wild reputation and when she is found dead in a compromising position, it is up to the Dahlias to discover who her murder is. Meanwhile the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) has set up a work camp on the outskirts of town and there are many strange men employed at the camp. Did one of them find Rona Jean too tempting?

The CCC was a real organization and it is credited with helping struggling people, especially World War I veterans, find meaningful work during the Depression. Throughout the nine-year life of the program nearly three million men worked in 2,600 CCC work camps in every state and territory. The workers planted three billion trees, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide, built dams and fought forest fires. The CCC was responsible for more than half the total public and private reforestation that has been achieved in the nation's entire history.

Oh and the mystery was interesting, too. The first book in the series is The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree