The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
on May 5, 2026
Genres: Fiction / Historical / General
Pages: 656
Format: Hardcover
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In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.
Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?
This is the type of historical fiction I enjoy most. It’s set in 1933, in Mississippi, during the Great Depression. It’s about a group of strong women from very different backgrounds. The story is very character-driven, and we get their alternating points of view. Birdie is an “old maid” who goes to Oxford to ask her uppity sister for financial help to pay the taxes on their family home. It doesn’t take long for Birdie to figure out her sister’s life is nothing but lies. Meg is an eleven-year-old orphan who is very bright but has been treated very badly by the director of the orphanage. Charlie is a woman who feels like she has nothing left to lose. When Birdie meets Charlie, a sort of sisterhood develops with Meg and some of the other townswomen. They want to take back their lives and gain some control again.
I love the entertaining way Stockett deals with heavy social issues. There is a way about her writing that is very atmospheric and emotional, with lots of tension. The women in her stories always have a sense of themselves and are simply trying to get by and get justice. They’re poor but have resilience. Again, she shows how Southern society and its politeness is all for show. We get to see the stigma of divorce, homosexuality, and what it means to be an “immoral” woman. Stockett doesn’t shy away from the horrific treatment of orphans and women in this one.
The book is over 650 pages long, and I know that seems like a lot to most readers (The Help wasn’t a short book at 522 pages), but I devoured it. It is a much slower pace than Stockett’s debut, but the characters make it all worthwhile and unforgettable. I felt so much while reading this; I laughed, I teared up, and was oh so very angry. 1930s Mississippi is written about in such great detail that I could feel the humidity and the tension of Oxford. This was worth the seventeen-year wait. Highly recommend!
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