SILK

In this historical novel, a woman in the late 19th century chooses between two possible lovers.

At the center of Alexander’s story is Caroline Corbett, part of a wealthy South Carolina family in 1899, who decides to seek a job at a sewing factory in order to become a modern working woman. Her friend Anne Brighton is enamored of factory boss Mr. Sanders, whose wife died of tuberculosis (and who strikes Caroline as an unlikely romantic hero). Caroline’s own love interests are at first split between courtly Dr. Stephen Connor and humble but attractive sharecropper Clayton Bell. Unfortunately for Caroline, Clayton’s cousin Jessie Bell considers him the love of her life. As the tale progresses, readers watch the parallel tracks of Caroline’s romances and Jessie’s obsessions. The main confusion in these pages is that the novel’s subtitle is belied by its cast of characters. Although a good deal of space is devoted to smart, saintly Caroline, it is devious, “kinda cracked” Jessie who dominates this series opener thoroughly. Her fixations and villainies, culminating in the book’s climactic, tragic scene, make for far more compelling reading than any of the details of Caroline’s pallid courtship with Connor. When the tale eventually gets around to the line “Caroline wondered at her own descent into the eternal land of carnal desire,” many readers will be thinking that the descent is mighty leisurely. “Most girls pass through their crushes and move on,” the narrative tells readers, “but Jessie was far from ordinary—her intensity funneled every effort into purposeful direction.” That passion is magnetic right to the end of the story. Alexander does a good job of fleshing out all of the other major characters, but the novel belongs to dangerous, deadly Jessie.

A richly atmospheric tale about two very different women seeking their ideal loves.