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    The Daisy Children: A Novel
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    The Daisy Children: A Novel
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    The Daisy Children: A Novel
    Ebook393 pages6 hours

    The Daisy Children: A Novel

    By Sofia Grant

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Inspired by true events, in Sofia Grant’s powerfully moving new novel a young woman peels back the layers of her family’s history, discovering a tragedy in the past that explains so much of the present. This unforgettable story is one of hope, healing, and the discovery of truth.

    Sometimes the untold stories of the past are the ones we need to hear...

    When Katie Garrett gets the unexpected news that she’s received an inheritance from the grandmother she hardly knew, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She flees Boston—and her increasingly estranged husband—and travels to rural Texas.

    There, she’s greeted by her distant cousin Scarlett. Friendly, flamboyant, eternally optimistic, Scarlett couldn’t be more different from sensible Katie. And as they begin the task of sorting through their grandmother’s possessions, they discover letters and photographs that uncover the hidden truths about their shared history, and the long-forgotten tragedy of the New London school explosion of 1937 that binds them.

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 7, 2018
    ISBN9780062693457
    Author

    Sofia Grant

    Sofia Grant has the heart of a homemaker, the curiosity of a cat, and the keen eye of a scout. She works from an urban aerie in Oakland, California.

    Read more from Sofia Grant

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    Reviews for The Daisy Children

    3.5/5

    46 ratings18 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Weaving seamlessly back and forth in time, The Daisy Children by Sofia Grant is a multi-generational novel that is based on a real life tragedy.

      In 1937, several young lives are tragically taken when a gas leak causes an explosion at their school. Several families immediately have “replacement” children which are referred to as the "Daisy Children". Caroline and Hugh Pierson are one of the families whose “replacement” daughter Margaret is quite willful and stubborn which often puts her at odds with her mother. As an adult, Georgina’s memories of her childhood are dramatically different from Margaret’s and her mother is somewhat flabbergasted at some of Georgina’s accusations.  

      Margaret ends up making an impetuous decision to marry a man who cannot forget his family’s loss in the explosion and their union is passionate yet volatile. Margaret’s relationship with her daughter, Georgina, is deeply troubled which results in a lifelong estrangement after Georgina leaves home. Georgina’s relationship with her daughter, Katie, is also dysfunctional, but Katie is willing to overlook her mother’s more annoying traits. After Margaret passes away, will her surprise bequests to Katie and Katie's cousin Scarlett repair the long running rift in their family?

      The inheritance comes at a good time for Katie since she at loose ends and could use some time away from home. Her trip hits quite a few snags and once she arrives in Texas, this hiatus from Boston proves to be quite the catalyst for future changes. Her marriage to her husband, Liam, is not in a good place but it takes distance from her regular life to gain much needed perspective to view her marriage (and her husband) more clearly.

      Katie is surprised by how much she enjoys spending time with Scarlett as they work together to fulfill the stipulations of Margaret’s will. As she and Scarlett clean out Margaret’s home, there are a few surprises awaiting them. Letters hint at family secrets and Katie hopes to glean some background information on her mother’s relationship with Margaret. Katie clearly sees her mother's flaws and their relationship works best with Katie spending minimal time with Georgina.

      With real life events serving as the story’s backdrop, The Daisy Children is an engaging and interesting novel. The women in the Pierson family are not exactly the warm and cuddly types but some of their standoffishness is understandable given their family history. With some unexpected twists and turns, Sofia Grant brings this multi-layered novel to an uplifting conclusion that will delight readers.
    • 4/5
      FICTIONSofia GrantThe Daisy Children: A NovelWilliam MorrowTrade paperback, 978-0-0626-9344-1 (also available as an e-book and an audio-book), 432 pgs., $15.99August 2018Katie Garret is having a bad week — she’s been fired from her marketing design position; she’s failed to get pregnant this month, too; and she just accepted delivery of her husband Liam’s new $240 trousers. Then her mother, Georgina (a real piece of work, this one), calls to tell her that Grandma Margaret has died and Katie is named in the will. Katie, newly unemployed and un-enamored with her husband, decides to make the trip from Boston to rural East Texas, a kind of vacation from her real life. “She’d have a baby when she was meant to,” Katie thinks. “She’d get to New London and discover she’d inherited a fortune, or a pittance; she’d go to Dallas and bond with her mother or argue with her. All of it would be fine.”But even after the mugging and the appearance of astonishing cousin Scarlett and being mistaken for a vagrant and then a burglar and uncovering the clues that gradually reveal generations of family secrets that echo loudly into the present, Katie is worrying about the wrong things. “The thing she really ought to be worrying about,” Grant writes, “was that Texas would seep into her pores and take root.”The Daisy Children: A Novel is new fiction from Sofia Grant, whom y’all probably know better as Sophie Littlefield, author of more than two dozen books in many genres including YA, apocalyptic fiction, thriller, domestic suspense, and women’s fiction, this last being assigned to The Daisy Children metadata. This is unfairly reductive; what it should say is a carefully and elegantly constructed exploration of a hundred years of dysfunctional family relationships, the nature of secrets, and the potential for healing.When Littlefield became interested in writing historical fiction, she became Grant, deciding a name change made sense in this departure from her previous work. The Daisy Children is inspired by the 1937 New London, Texas, school explosion, about which Grant read a nonfiction account and was touched and intrigued by the story of those who survived it. She began wondering how the community might have changed and adapted in the years that followed.The third-person narration moves back and forth in time in alternating chapters, a four-dimensional story in which you can feel the puzzle pieces locking firmly into place. Part contemporary fiction, part historical, The Daisy Children is fast and evenly paced; the clues are well placed; and the many plot twists, both large and small, propel the action effectively.Contemporaneously with the explosion, East Texas experienced an oil boom in the twentieth century that, for a while anyway, transformed the economy and introduced new class dynamics, which play an important part in both the daily functioning of the households and in the larger questions of chance, fate, and worthiness when tragedy strikes.Grant’s women characters are distinctive personalities with complicated emotional lives, complex back stories, and rich details that reveal their essence. For example, Scarlett has a tattoo of monkeys — plastic monkeys from the Barrel of Monkeys game — “linked by their tails, frolic[king] across her collar bones … disappearing into her tank top at the armholes.” This tattoo tells you much of what you need to know of the essence of Scarlett.The flaws of The Daisy Children are small: the men are not as vital or complex as the women; the speed of development of a new love interest strikes me as a false note, seemingly out of character for the couple as individuals. In comparison to its entertaining charm and engaging, sleight-of-hand technique for introducing some of life’s biggest questions, these flaws are insignificant.Grant’s vibrant style is often humorous, sometimes drolly amusing (bereavement “sounded old-fashioned, like pinafore”), sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes the equivalent of slapstick, sometimes arch and biting. The perfect blending of all of these is the child Margaret, a combination of Nellie Oleson and Harriet the Spy.The waste of years and human potential is heartbreaking — all the lost opportunities to atone for, to forgive, to gather and in so doing create strength not possible alone, to be a family. Katie confronts a turning point, the proverbial fork in the road — who are you now? Who are you going to be?Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
    • 4/5
      Such a sad story based on an actual event.
    • 2/5
      Interesting concept for a novel. Uneven execution. Based on a real-life tragic event, but as a romance not historical fiction. Too much of the book read like it was just written as filler.
    • 2/5
      The Daisy Children by Sofia GrantI’m disappointed in this one. I was imagining a treatment of the tragic explosion in a Texas school that killed most of the children in the town of New London 1937. Unfortunately this tale was only superficially about that and much more about a dysfunctional family and the unfortunate choices they made. The “love” story is barely there, the characters are stock, the story could take in Anytown, USA. The one redeeming feature is the twist that is revealed in the last few chapters. Is it worth reading the other 300 pages? I don’t think so.2 of 5 stars
    • 3/5
      The Daisy Children, Sofia Grant, authorI don’t usually read chick lit, which is how I would describe this book. However, I received this book from librarything in exchange for a review, so I read it until the end. For lovers of that genre, this will be a great read. For others, like me, it will simply pass the time pleasantly.The story is very loosely based on a horrific historic event which took place in 1937 in a small town in Texas. An elementary school exploded when gas collected in the basement of the building and ignited. Hundreds of children were severely injured and died. This book tries to inform the readers about what possibly might happen when those parents who suffered such grievous losses that day, had other children, sometimes to replace the ones lost. The effect of that loss on the parents’ behavior toward the children born later, and the effects on the children themselves, whose very presence kept the memory of those lost alive, could be devastating and long lasting even extending from generation to generation.In the novel, four generations of women are examined, beginning with the first that lost a child to the tragedy. The women all seem to share a selfish, headstrong personality, and it isn’t until the fourth generation that there is somewhat of a softening to that trait in the form of some characters who morph into more compassionate individuals. I did not like many of the characters as they seemed shallow and self absorbed. They marched to their own drummers at the expense of others. They were devious, disloyal and even dishonest. Secrets, lies and impulsive behavior seemed to guide the women of the novel. They did not deal with disappointment well and blamed others for their misfortunes.The book would have been served well with a family tree in the back, to guide the reader through the many generations and relatives; however, that might give away part of the story so the reader would have to entertain discipline and not peek to set everything straight until the last page was turned.
    • 4/5
      I was given a copy of this book for the purpose of honest review.Katie Garrett is having a rough spell. She has just lost her job and her dreams of conceiving a child just don't seem to be happening and she and her husband are not on the same page anymore. The unexpected death of her grandmother, one she never really knew to be exact, gives her the opportunity to get away for a while. The beginning of her trip is a disaster and she wonders if things will look up at some point. She meets her cousin Scarlett and as they go through Katie's grandmothers' estate old family mysteries come out of the woodwork and secrets held until death come to light. This is a wonderful read. I must admit the beginning was hard to get going at first but I stuck in there and was very happy I did. This book has many twists and turns that will keep you forming new outcomes in your head. The final outcome is not one I had even thought of. I don't want to give things away so my review is a bit vague, but I think you will like this book.
    • 4/5
      Author Sofia Grant's novel The Daisy Children begins with a true event. In 1937, an elementary school in New London, Texas, exploded, killing nearly 300 people, mostly children. Her storyline alternates between the aftermath of that event, and the toll it took on one family, and present day Boston.In Boston, Kate has just lost her job, and she and her husband are having problems conceiving a baby. Kate's husband works crazy hours at his job, and has become more distant. When Kate gets a letter informing her that she has inherited something from her late grandmother Margaret in Texas, she is shocked. She only met the woman once, and her own mother Georgina didn't get along with her mother, seeing her rarely, and often expounding about what a terrible mother Margaret was.Margaret was what was known in New London as a "Daisy Child." After the horrific explosion, eleven babies were born to families who lost children there. The mothers of those children formed a support group, and worked to keep the memories of their deceased children alive.Margaret didn't get along with her mother Caroline almost from the beginning. She was headstrong, and mean to other children, lording it over them that her father was an important oil man, and their fathers merely worked for hers.She fell in love with Hank, the older brother of her best friend, and a survivor of the explosion. Hank suffered from what we today would call PTSD, and he had problems with alcohol and anger issues. Margaret thought her love could help him.Caroline was dead-set against Margaret marrying Hank, and did everything in her power to turn Margaret against Hank. When Margaret had a daughter of her own, Georgina, she got a taste of her own medicine. Georgina clashed with her mother, and counted down the days until she could leave home.Meanwhile, Kate meets her cousin Scarlett in Texas, and learns a little more about her grandmother as they go about cleaning Margaret's house. Margaret is described by a neighbor as "mean as a wasp and tough as a skewed skunk".Secrets are uncovered, including a whopper of a one near the end that I didn't see coming. Young Margaret states early on "if there was one thing (she) had learned in her eleven years on earth, it was that everyone had something they were hiding." Truer words were never spoken.Grant describes the day of the explosion as Caroline tells Margaret what happened. The descriptions of parents rushing in to look for their children brings to mind the horror of the Newtown massacre and 9/11. Caroline's husband found his daughter Ruby's body, and he "identified her by her shoes that he'd helped her buckle that morning." What a heartbreaking sentence.The Daisy Children is about the often painful relationship between mothers and daughters, and how we never really know what is going on in someone's life, even if we are close to them. This book may make you want to sit down with your grandmother, and ask her to talk about her life. You may be surprised. If you enjoy books about mother/daughter relationships, put The Daisy Children on your reading list.
    • 4/5
      This was a good summer read that was very hard to put down. While the book was based on a true story that happened in 1937, am explosion in a New London, Texas school that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 children, the story is fiction. The author said after she read about this, she couldn't imagine how the families were able to move on after losing an entire generation of children. Her book is one way to imagine trying to come back from something as horrible as this. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      I like when I find a book that is based on a real event. The school explosion that starts this book did indeed happen. When Ms. Grant learned about it she developed her fiction. I will admit to some time with Mr. Google after reading this book to read about the explosion. It must have been horrific for all involved. It did lead to safer natural gas practices for it was this accident that led to adding the smell to gas so that people can recognize when a leak is happening.The Daisy Children is a generational tale of mothers and daughters and the damage they can do to each other. Caroline starts the train wrecking with how she treats her daughter Margaret. Margaret is the child that was born after the school explosion that killed her daughter Ruby. Caroline is also the leading lady of society in New London, Texas. Margaret and the rest of the children born 9 months after the disaster are known as the Daisy Children and they form a sort of club in town. They are trotted out once a year when the event is painfully remembered. Margaret is not a pleasant child – she hides and gathers secrets. She is sly and unpleasant. She somehow knows she is second best. Still she strives to live up to what her mother expects…until she falls in love.Margaret does not marry the man her mother wants for her but rather someone she has loved for a very long time. He is, though not a good provider. They have one child, Georgina and she and Margaret do not get along. As Margaret struggles and her relationship with her daughter deteriorates she ultimately finds herself back at home. As Georgina grows up she rebels and leaves.Georgina’s daughter Katie is the driver of the other side of the story as she learns that her grandmother – whom she had only met once – has left her an inheritance. She is dissatisfied with her life in Boston; she was just fired and her marriage is less than perfect. Her relationship with her mother is good but her mother is a bit flighty and she will not tell Katie anything about her grandmother. She also barely knows her cousin Scarlett but that doesn’t stop Scarlett from welcoming Katie wholeheartedly to her life.This a complicated, multi-layered tale covering several generations and a number of issues. But at the heart it’s about mothers and daughters. One of the more complicated relationships that exist on this earth; when it is good, it can be very good but when it is bad – watch out. Katie seems to have broken the curse of mother/daughter relationships in her family tree but I wonder – her mother seems to be a rather selfish woman who tells her own version of the truth.The book starts with one disaster – the horror at the school. Then it moves on to an an ongoing mess with the creation of a club for the “replacement” babies. It can only go up from there, right? In some ways yes, in others, no. There are many moving parts in the book and some just keep ambling on without any real purpose or resolution. Others come to the fore only to be displaced by something else in the crowded field. I can’t help but feel that there’s a story I lost while reading but I’m just not sure what it was.That is not to write that I disliked the book – I didn’t. It just left me feeling a bit off balance and perhaps that was the author’s intent. The ending doesn’t wrap everything up so much as leave a lot of questions. There was a LOT going on in the book and so much to address and play out – perhaps a few more pages were necessary.
    • 4/5
      The Daisy Children is based on an actual disaster that devastated a small community in 1937 Texas. A gas explosion decimated the New London school killing over 300 children and their teachers. As the families and the nation mourned, the children that were born nine months afterwards were known as replacements for the children who perished. The focus is on the fictional lives of four generation of women whose history was tied to the tragedy. It delves into their secrets and the consequences of their actions. An emotional journey with a satisfactory ending.
    • 3/5
      Katie makes a trip to Texas to collect her inheritance from the grandmother she barely knew, meets her cousin Scarlett with whom she will share the inheritance, and together they discover long-held family secrets. Stir in a little romance and voila! An enjoyable summer read.
    • 5/5
      An ARC was provided in exchange for an honest review. This did not influence my thoughts in any way. The Daisy Children is based on the real life story of the New London Texas School explosion in 1937. Several hundred people perished, mostly children. This book tells the fictional story of one of the Daisy Children, conceived to replace their lost sibling. This book is so heartbreaking and moving. It shows, with great compassion and caring, what these families went though and how it forever affected them, even generations later. I really loved it and I look forward to more books from this author. 4 1/2 stars!
    • 4/5
      Last year I won The Dress in the Window by Sofia Grant and liked it very much, so I tried again this year and snagged her second novel The Daisy Children. I think the first was the better one. However, despite its flaws, I did enjoy reading The Daisy Children. It is based on a real story of a 1937 school explosion that killed many children. Grant, however, entirely makes up the characters and the story that revolves around this horrific incident, including the notion of "Daisy Children." They are the children born after the fire, replacement children, so to speak. While not exactly the historical novel I expected, the story goes back and forth from 1937 onward, alternating with present day chapters. The central characters are the great grandmother Caroline, grandmother Margaret, and mother Georgina, along with daughter Katie in the present. Each has a less than positive mother daughter relationship. Each woman has difficult relationships with the men in their lives. And of course there are secrets, always secrets. Sometimes I did not quite understand the motivation of some of the characters or it just didn't ring true. The best example of this was how Katie and her husband's relationship simply fell apart, or what was behind cousin Scarlett's relationship with boyfriend Merritt? And I did not at all get the role of neighbor Jam in this story. It does mostly come together at the end when the big secret is revealed and it was a twist I was not expecting. There is a clue to the secret in the family tree on the last page of the book. Can you figure it out?
    • 3/5
      Basically a feel-good book about a 30 year old getting her shit together. Of course it takes some adversity and a new man, but it was a nice, gentle book that didn’t harbor much in the way of violence or cruelty. It also didn’t do much with an opportunity it presented, almost as if the writer just didn’t know what to do with it in the end. The Daisy Children themselves - all born 9-10 months after the deaths of their siblings in the school explosion - there was no connection there. Nothing dark, nothing sinister except for Margaret’s case, but even that isn’t something new. Sisters bearing and rearing one another’s children as if they were their own has been going on and written about for a long time. Basically all the members of the older generations are horrible women, although Margaret seems to have repented of the dumb shit she pulled. Still, it was nice for Katie and Scarlett to connect...although I wish Grant hadn’t given her that Barrel-o-Monkeys tattoo which didn’t connect with the illicit toy in any way. Sigh. Not a terrible book, but not an excellent on either.
    • 3/5
      I found myself not looking forward to picking this book back up to continue the story. I had trouble liking any of the women involved. Four generations of messed up mother and daughter relationships. Chapters shifting back and forth from past to present.It all started with the explosion in 1937 at the New London School in Texas. A gas explosion that killed so many children in this small Texas town. The aftermath of the parents trying to move forward after losing their children. The focus is mainly on one family and the generations of mothers and their daughters down the line. Not good relationships. We don't find out until the end of the book the secret that is the core. Mothers and their daughters never being able to break the mold of being cold or unfeeling. Sad really.
    • 4/5
      The March 1937 explosion at the New London School claimed a generation in this small Rust County, Texas town. Some two hundred ninety-five children and teachers lost their lives, changing families and lives forever.This unalterable truth is the basis for the fictional story of the Daisy children. They are the children born the year after the brothers and sisters they will never know were lost in the disaster. They are the replacement children, meant to take the place of the angelic child stolen from their parents far too soon. The narrative spins out a story encompassing generations of mothers and daughters. The unspoken truth of being a replacement lies beneath the mothers’ stories; their relationships with their daughters and of those daughters with their own daughters are, for the most part, drenched in sadness. Whether this is because the mothers could never accept the replacement child for the lost child, or because they simply lacked mothering skills, remains for the reader to decide. Strong, realistic [although mostly unlikeable] characters populate the heart-wrenching tale of struggling, dysfunctional relationships. The plot twists, unfolding slowly as the truth reveals itself; readers are not likely to foresee the stunning twist near the end. The writing captivates the readers, drawing them into the somber narrative. It’s a story that is sometimes difficult to read; a story with motivations that are sometimes difficult to understand. And yet, readers continue to turn the pages, hoping for an outcome that will finally break the lingering spell of the Daisy children.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I was fortunate to win this early release book through Goodreads Giveaway from William Morrow and I am grateful. I personally did not know about the New London school explosion and reading this book certainly prompted me to research further. How the author took this tragic event and then built a story around it spanning over generations was amazing but so life like. People make choices that can haunt lives for years to come. It is a sad story based on the school explosion, one can always wonder what if it did not happen but it did and for generations to come it left its mark. Thank you for sharing an advanced copy.