The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas ~ Book Review

Queenie Bean is a young wife living on the plains of Harveyville, Kansas with her farmer husband, Grover during the 1930's.  Times are tough.  They haven't seen rain in a long time, the crops are burning up, there are no jobs in the area but Queenie and Grover are doing better than most.  But their dreams are dashed when Queenie miscarries and it affects her ability to bear children.  Queenie takes solace in the deep friendships she has formed in the quilting group she meets with weekly.   Though usually very wary of strangers, especially during these times with many transients show up looking for work and handouts, Queenie reaches out to a new member of their community.  Rita is from the big city but married a local boy and must now adjust to this small town living.  But Rita's journalist past clashes with the loyalty of the members of the small town, especially when a body turns up in a ditch and threatens to dig up long buried secrets.  

This was a backlist novel from Sandra Dallas that I hadn't read yet.  I've enjoyed many of her novels so was looking forward to this one also.  I found it an ok read dealing with the friendships and secrets of a group of small town women.  When Rita shows up with a penchant for digging up secrets, it causes the loyalty of the women to become even tighter but is something that just might blow them up.  Queenie struggles in her loyalty to long standing friendships set against welcoming an exciting new comer with different ideas.  While I did find the exploration of small town friendships in the setting of the hardship of the '30's interesting and while I did like the ending,  I did find parts of the story really dragged for me.  The author did do a great job of describing small town and farm living during this time as she did the difficulty for women at this time.  But the sheer number of characters made it so that I was never really connected with any of them and was at times confused.  I was glad I did read it as the Dirty 30's is a draw for me in books as is friendships amongst women in hardship and I do like this author but in the end it was just an average read for me personally.  

I rated it a 6.5\10

2023 Reading Challenge Goal Met:  Read what I own and Oldest Purchased Book