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Susan Wittig Albert

The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

The second book in the Darling Dahlias series, 2011

To garden clubs everywhere,

with grateful thanks for

making your communities more beautiful.

The Darling Dahlias and I send you our love.

Author’s Note

I also love language, and in this series, as in all my books, I’ve tried to use the language of the people and their times. This historical series includes language and social practices appropriate to the early 1930s in the rural South. For instance, the characters use the terms “colored,” “colored folk,” and “Negro” when they refer to African Americans, and the attitudes of white people toward their black fellow citizens reflect the conscious and unconscious racism of the times. To write truthfully about this time and place requires the use of language and ideas that may be offensive to some readers. Thank you for understanding that I intend no offense.

As I work on these books, I especially find myself loving the spirit of the times. The 1930s were terribly difficult years, because so many people were facing daunting challenges that resemble some of the economic challenges we face today. But people didn’t lose hope. They had faith in themselves, in their families, and in their communities, and they did whatever they could to help themselves. I am touched by this spirit as I read the newspapers and books published in those years, and as I remember my mother and my aunts talking about the “tough times” they lived through in the decade before I was born. Ordinary people were tough and resilient enough to weather extraordinary challenge, and I hope to represent that spirit in these books.

Susan Wittig Albert

November 1, 1930

Darling, Alabama

Dear Reader,

When the author of The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree asked us if she could write a second book about us, we were thrilled.

It’s not every garden club that gets a book written about it, much less two books! But we agreed because we liked the way Mrs. Albert gave you all the ins and outs of what happened in The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. Mr. Dickens naturally didn’t print the full story in the Dispatch, so lots of people in town didn’t know all the details and were very surprised when they found out. In fact, some people were so surprised that they tried to boycott the book when Mr. Mann put a stack of them out for sale in front of the Mercantile, and Mrs. Lima was heard to say that she didn’t know how she was going to hold up her head in this community, now that everybody knew what had gone on in the back room at Lima’s Drugs. We’re sorry about that, but we do believe that Mr. Lima will toe the straight and narrow from here on out, and that Mrs. Lima won’t have a thing to fret about. Everybody understands that people make mistakes. Live and learn, as the old folks say.

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