“Harper Albright has pinned all her hopes on a future in fashion design. But when it comes crashing down around her, she returns home to Fairhope, Alabama, and to Millie, the woman who first taught her to sew. As she rethinks her own future, secrets long hidden about Millie's past are brought to light.
In 1946, Millie Middleton boarded a train and left Charleston to keep half of her heritage hidden. She carried with her two heirloom buttons and the dream of owning a dress store. She never expected to meet a charming train jumper who changed her life forever . . . and led her yet again to a heartbreaking choice about which heritage would define her future.
Now, together, Harper and Millie return to Charleston and the man who may hold the answers they seek . . . and a chance at the dress shop they've both dreamed of. But it's not until all appears lost that they see the unexpected ways to mend what frayed between the seams.”
Series: Book #1 in the “Heirloom Secrets” series.
Spiritual Content- A few Scriptures are quoted & remembered; Prayers & Thanking God; Talks about God, His plans, & dreams/goals that are from Him; 'H's are capital when referring to God; Rose in the prologue thinks that “If God thought her life worth living without her daughter, who was she to question His timing?”; Peter notes that it was a lot easier to hear God’s voice when he no longer allowed his stepfather’s “disapproval to scream inadequacy over his life”; Millie senses a voice that is “altogether separate from her own” tell her she is adored and feels purpose by it; *Spoiler* Towards the end, Millie realizes that somewhere along the way, she stopped believing that God was good and trusted in her own ability to keep her daughters safe, which lead to major fear and anxiety; She feels God talk to her in “a place within Millie’s heart so very deep one might call it her soul” and prays for Jesus to be her Savior and to watch over her and her family *End of Spoiler*; Harper questions why God gave her “such an out-of-reach dream”; Towards the end, Harper’s father talks to her about Ezekiel and the dry bones coming alive & *Spoiler* she realizes her gifting/dream is actually to repair broken places and things; Harper feels a voice inside of tell her about her gift and the intent for it (Supposed to be God, but no Scriptures are referenced) *End of Spoiler*; Mentions of God & His plan; Mentions of prayers, praying, Mentions of churches, church going, ministers/preachers, services, & Sunday school; Mentions of a place being called “the Holy City”; A few mentions of Jesus; A couple mentions of Bibles & events from the Bible; A couple mentions of “Amazing Grace” & another song; A mention of the rapture; A mention of the pope; A mention of a place feeling like holy ground;
*Note: “Heavens” is exclaimed once and “what the heavens” is said once; The phrases “sweatin’ like a sinner in church”, “come hell or high water”, “thank heavens”, and “Heavens to Betsy” are all said once; Millie thinks about the lowcountry traditional about blue paint keeping ghosts out and while she doesn’t believe in ghosts, she knows about having a haunting past and wonders if ghosts are just a fictional version of the ache when your heart wants something that’s gone; Mentions of places feeling magical or like magic; A few mentions of being lucky (Millie’s mother says this about Millie and Millie disagrees with it); A couple mentions of fate; A mention of shadows turning into monsters or fairies; A mention of a sunshine rain being said to be when “the devil was beatin’ his wife”.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘drat’, a ‘heck’, an ‘idiot’, a ‘stupid’, a ‘suckers’, a ‘what in Sam Hill’, a ‘what in tarnation’, two ‘confounded’s, and three forms of ‘darn/darn it’; Some eye rolling & sarcasm; A young Millie thinks that her mama doesn’t like her using the word ‘darn’, but that “thinking ain’t the same as saying. Restraint had to count for something, right?”; Harper tells Millie that she doesn’t like to swear and instead wants to give her word about keeping a secret; Some pain, injuries, & blood/bleeding (barely-above-not-detailed); Going through a cyclone (up to semi-detailed); Seeing someone punch another & blood/bleeding (barely-above-not-detailed); For a brief moment, Rose in the prologue thinks about using a knife for another purpose (hinted suicide); In the 1940s, Millie sees a Black woman with a baby caught train jumping and being hit by a train worker; Millie doesn’t lie per se to a woman about her relationship with a man, but doesn’t tell the truth until she is directly asked about it; Millie starts to agree with her mother about “some secrets were better kept quiet” as she gets older, but starts to have major fear and anxiety about keeping secrets; Harper tells Peter about the time she nearly drowned (up to semi-detailed); *Spoiler* Millie feels the air sucked from her chest randomly when Franklin, her husband, dies even though she’s not with him *End of Spoiler*; Many mentions of slavery, slaves and a child being sold, & Black people being attacked/beaten (including a young mother in the 1940s and Millie’s father being killed); Mentions of Millie’s father being killed for protecting her when other men tried to attack her for playing with their children and for loving a Black woman (the men weren’t prosecuted because they said it was self-defense); Mentions of deaths (including of a father, mothers, and husbands by a boating accident, murder, illnesses/cancer, and war), grief, & anxiety/fear after the death of a loved one; Mentions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested, a bomb at a church, & little girls being killed (Millie panics that this could have happened to her family, up to semi-detailed); Mentions of wars, deaths, & the Great Depression; Mentions of illnesses (including coughing up blood and cancer) & deaths (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of illegal train jumping, chain gangs, & injuries; Mentions of a fire; Mentions of thieves & stealing; Mentions of alcohol, a wine cellar, & drunks; Mentions of parents disowning their children (including a stepparent); Mentions of lies, lying, liars, deception, & guilt; Mentions of nightmares; Mentions of a young Harper being uncomfortable with seeing crabs dying and eating them; A few mentions of a cyclone & potential deaths; A few mentions of blood/bleeding; A mention of lynchings; A mention of a place burning down; A mention of poison in a movie; A mention of tobacco; A mention of divorce; A mention of college parties;
*Note: The prologue opens in 1860 with a Black mother learning her nine-year-old daughter been sold; A young Millie faces a young man looking at her in disgust, calling her “filthy”, and pushing her when he finds out about her being half Black (*Spoilers* He later makes a snide comment about her place and throws a brick in Millie’s family’s home/business; This is the catalyst that makes Millie’s mother want her to pass herself as a white woman and leave to go to another place to start fresh *End of Spoiler*); Millie has a lot of parts where she feels torn and upset at having to hide part of her heritage and it creates major fear in herself especially when *Major Spoilers* she is pregnant and concerned how the baby will look; She gives birth to twin girls, one lighter than the other and gives the light-skin baby to her mother-in-law to raise as her own; This breaks both Millie and Franklin’s hearts to do, and they question often if it is right; Millie tells Franklin the truth about her heritage after giving birth and comes up with this plan, despite neither of them wanting to do it, but having to for the sake of their daughters and what it would mean if they were raised as twins; Millie frequently forgets to eat and wakes up in a panic because of it all; One of the girls tells Millie about a boy calling her an awful name and that if she had any siblings, everyone would see what he already knew—“that either my mother had something to hide or my daddy wasn’t really my father”, adding that “colored people don’t belong beside while people” and that she or her mother will get hurt or someone will light their home on fire (not said with kindness or as a warning, but mean spirited); Towards the end, when the girls are sixteen, Millie tells them the truth about her heritage and the two of them being sisters *End of Spoilers*; Recalling men calling a little biracial girl a horrible name; A man tells Millie that his family doesn’t care about someone’s race, but they do care if there is a scandal following the family name; All about & many, many mentions of prejudice, hatred, racism, racial violence, & different things being illegal based on skin color (such as marriage to someone outside their race & going to places only meant for one race); A young man says that women shouldn’t run businesses (1940s); Peter’s stepfather had lofty expectations for him and they are no longer in contact after the death of Peter’s mother; Peter has a panic attack (up to semi-detailed); Harper feels like a failure at her dream/goal that she’s worked on for years when she is discouraged by an expert in the field & hears a voice inside of her say negative things like “your dreams will never amount to anything” (*Spoiler* At the very end, she realizes that it wasn’t her true dream and discovers the actual version *End of Spoiler*); Millie tells Harper “none of that feminist rubbish” when she wants to carry her own bags and there is a man available for doing that; Millie says she’s usually “the first one to advocate for women having equal opportunities”, but wonders if Harper needs more driving lessons; Harper refers to her shoe collection as “therapy heels” as she often buys them when upset; Going to Starbucks; Many, many mentions of pop culture references, brand names, celebrities, songs, places, TV shows, movies, & books (Coca-Cola, Chanel No. 5, Peanuts comic strips, Tupperware, Swiffer, WD-40, Plinko, Saks Fifth Avenue, Anthropologie, Target, Starbucks, Forever 21, Pacific Sunwear, Hobby Lobby, Lowe’s, Five and Dime, Aiken-Rhett mansion, Oz, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Darcy, Sherlock Holmes, BBC, Gilmore Girls, Saved by the Bell, I Love Lucy, American Bandstand, Titanic, Sabrina, Casablanca, Notorious, The Notebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Etsy, WebMD, Southern Living, Benny Goodman, Hugh Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergam, Lucille Ball, Ryan Gosling, Ryan Seacrest, Meg Ryan, Katharine Hepburn, Reese Witherspoon, J. Lo, Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar Allen Poe, Langston Hughes, Longfellow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald, Celine Dion, Taylor Swift, Etta James, Ed Sheeran, Frank Sinatra, “Rocking’ Robin’”, Walter Cronkite, Coco Chanel, Tiffany & Co., Dior, Vans, Little Golden Books, & ‘The Glass Menagerie’ book); A couple mentions of historical figures (John Wilkes Booth & Rutledge); A couple mentions of Bluetooth; A mention of a car brand; A mention of NASA.
Sexual Content- An almost kiss (semi-detailed), three hair/head kisses, two not-detailed kisses, a barely-above-not-detailed kiss, and four semi-detailed kisses; Remembering kisses & an almost kiss (up to semi-detailed); Staring at lips & noticing others doing it (barely-above-not-detailed); Touches, Embraces, Dancing, Warmth, Sparks/Tingles, Flutters, Smelling, & Nearness (x2, up to semi-detailed); Wanting to touch & embrace (barely-above-not-detailed); Noticing & Staring (border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Blushes, Flirting, & Winks; A bit of jealousy; Rose in the prologue shares that the father of her daughter is a white man and it can be read into that the man was a wicked owner; *Spoilers, but important content note about a fade-to-black scene* Millie and Franklin are assumed by a innkeeper to be a newly married couple and gives them a room together; Franklin sleeps on the floor while Millie takes the bed, expect for when he was sick and she insisted he sleep in the bed beside her, so he placed two pillows between them; The innkeeper realizes they aren’t married and says she’ll make an honest couple out of them if they agree to get married; They get married and it’s implied they do not consummate the marriage after they’ve been married for five years; Millie needs help from her husband to zip and unzip her dress, it’s mentioned it’s right passed her bra line, he is always a gentleman with his zipping duty, and that she has come to look forward to these close moments between them; A couple mentions of Millie longing for Franklin; A hinted fade-to-black scene happens after they imply they love each other, he kisses her, and then takes her “willing and oh so ready” over the threshold; She is pregnant in the next chapter and after giving birth, tells him the truth about her heritage; At first, Franklin thinks that Millie had loved another man as one of the babies doesn’t look like him and questions if they are even his babies before being told the truth *End of Spoilers*; Harper has a thought that a man (Peter) is good looking enough to be a model for a charity calendar; Mentions of kisses & kissing; Mentions of flirting; Mentions of handsome men; Mentions of dances; A few mentions of dates; A couple mentions of possible affairs; A mention of swooning; Love, attraction, falling in love, & the emotions (x2);
*Note: Labor pain, giving birth, & passing up (including some mentions of blood/bleeding and nearly losing a wife because of blood loss, up to semi-detailed); Harper notices she’s gained some weight because of a sweet treat; A mention of hormones; A couple mentions of nursing & leaking milk.
-Millicent “Millie” Middleton
-Franklin Pinckney
-Harper Albright, age 26
-Peter Perkins, age 28
P.O.V. switches between them & Rose (Prologue only)
Dual Time Period (Contemporary & has chapters from 1860, 1946-49, 1952, 1955, 1958, 1963, 1967, 1968, 1992, 2008 & 2011)
369 pages
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New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
I’ve had this book (and the rest of the series) on my shelf to read for a long while now, particularly because of it being a dual time period. Those aren’t my favorite because I usually prefer one setting over the other and it feels like two connecting novellas smashed into each other. This book had elements of that at times.
After finishing it, I feel as if I’ve been through an emotional rollercoaster. So many parts of this story broke my heart in so many ways. The injustice in this book that these characters face made my vision turn red and make me ready to fight some other characters for being so ugly. This is definitely on the heavier side because of the themes of this book and topics discussed.
I did have a time trying to keep everyone straight and their time period details as there is a lot to keep up with. And then you add in all the connections and possible connections, I almost made a family tree with notes about everyone. 😅 That said, I was impressed with how the author weaved everything together and how it all came together. I wasn’t sure what would happen in the last half of the book as the first half felt like the whole story, but there were still hard times ahead for these characters.
Because of the heavy themes of racism, racial violence, and a very light hinted fade-to-black scene between a married couple, I would put this book at 16/17+ for sure; potentially older for some girls, but if she is interested in or doing a study on African Americans in the 1940-1960s, this book gives an up close and personal—and tough—look into it.
In the contemporary setting, Harper’s excuse for not being able to fall for Peter was really weak, in my opinion, but I struggled with her character anyway. She felt like a Debbie Downer. I really liked Peter and his nerdiness, though, I have to say I wasn’t very invested in the modern day setting of this book in general. I didn’t like the third act break-up/argument between them and thought it was just added in for some tension. It didn’t make sense to me and had a rushed conclusion.
If I could nitpick something, it would be all the pop culture references, particularly in the modern setting. We have a young woman in the historical setting that is going through major and heartbreaking events—and then in the modern time period Harper is being whinny about wasting her time trying to be a designer and listening to Taylor Swift. It was jarring and made me feel very little sympathy for Harper because of her pity-party moments when Millie has been through so much worse. I know we’re not supposed to compare tragedies or grief with others, but it can put our own minor inconveniences into perspective at least.
I’m coming away from this book with a new perspective and having done more research on topics and events discussed that I didn’t really know about prior to reading this book. It was definitely educational in that way and made me realize the amount of change that has happened in the last handful of decades. But it was also heavy. The modern setting tried to lighten it up some, but other parts of the book were so sad. There is an underline of hope, though, that kept the book from dragging down into the pits, so to speak, which I was grateful for.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
