This is a long, and wide-ranging, novel featuring Birdie Calhoun, a 24 year old sister living with her mother in relative poverty in the middle of the Great Depression in the southern United States. Her life is limited to surviving and is anything but exciting, while her sister Frances has gone north to Oxford and married well – apparently. So, Birdie is dispatched to follow her and ask for money to save the family.

She soon discovers that things are not what they seem. Frances is living in her mother-in-law’s house and her husband, Rory, is a mess of problems. In trying to do something about the situation, Birdie then meets Meg, a poor orphan locked away in a miserable institution for the children of fallen women.

That is the initial plot and Birdie spends the rest of the novel doing something about a series of grim situations while her sister is helpless. Lots of things happen! Birdie is enterprising when faced with desperation and constantly shocks herself into doing a little bit more to sort things out. It’s entertaining!

The excellent bit of the novel is the development of Birdie and her capacity to make do. Meg also develops as she grows up, and a highly complicated plot ends well. Many other characters are nicely drawn including the mother-in-law, Mrs Tartt and the chair of the local anti-vice league Garnett Pittman.

The book also provides a compelling picture of Texas in the grip of poverty after the stock market crash of 1929 and a series of devastating droughts. It’s a place where even the banks don’t make a profit and, although The Calamity Club is a long read, it’s well worth it.