Fifteen year old Maddie Sykes has just been left at her great aunt's house for the summer, missing her mother but relishing the chance to grow her sewing skills with the woman who inspired her dressmaking in the first place. Aunt Etta is the premier seamstress in the tobacco town of Bright Leaf, North Carolina, making all the dresses for the wives of the wealthy executives. When Aunt Etta falls ill, Maddie has to take over all the sewing for an upcoming gala - but her work reveals more than just hems that need to be fixed. The people of Bright Leaf are getting sick, and the tobacco company might know more about why than they're willing to admit.

Honestly, I stuck with this book because it was an interesting premise in a time period we don't see a lot of. Maddie's voice is very naive and really doesn't sound like a fifteen year old. The writing is... almost moralistic, I would say? There's clearly Good Guys and Bad Guys (the categorizations of whom I totally agree with), but they're so obvious that the reader doesn't really need to be told who is who. We're still definitely informed, though, and there's a lot of weirdly positioned info dumps where Maddie says someone "goes on to explain" something and similar structures that could have definitely been dialogue.

I think a lot of historical fiction readers will like this book, particularly if they enjoyed something like Radium Girls or The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and want something similar but fiction. I'd try this author again, but I have a feeling her writing style is just not going to be my thing.

Thank you William Morrow and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

narrative character lost a parent in WWII, narrative character has been abandoned by her mother, miscarriage and infertility, sexism, homophobia, medical coverup