The Daring Ladies of Lowell

I was really looking forward to Kate Alcott's The Daring Ladies of Lowell (#378).  To say I was disappointed in the book would be an understatement.  Good historical fiction illuminates the time and place where the story is set.  The best succeeds in transporting you there.  The wheels came off this cart pretty soon as far as I was concerned.

The "Golden Age of the Mill Girl" was an early Industrial Revolution phenomenon in America.  It didn't last very long as Ms. Alcott does point out in this novel.  But the relationship between Alice Barrow, the mill girl here, and the son of the mill owner seems contrived and unconvincing, almost as though it's included as a sop to those female readers who were expecting a romance.  Frankly, I think the book would have been stronger without it.

There really wasn't much mystery to the murder which occurs here, either.  I'll bet any reader will have the answer figured out in a few pages.

But what really bothered me about this book was the amount of misinformation that was included that would have taken only a few minutes on a computer to verify.  Yes, I realize that this is a work of fiction, and that much license can be taken.  But on the other hand, I believe the author also has a duty if he or she chooses to write in this genre to make an effort to get the background right, especially if she is a journalist.  For example, Ms. Alcott describes the mill girls' mandatory attendance (That part is true.) at St. Anne's Church in Lowell, with its white steeple .  As you can see in the link to its website,   St. Anne's Church, Lowell, MA  it doesn't have one now, and never has.  Maybe it doesn't bother anyone else, or maybe no one else would even notice that there are so many factual errors in this novel.  I, on the other hand, used to work as a gallery guide at the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum.  This was precisely the material I was responsible for learning and passing along to visitors, including the first group of Park Rangers for the first urban National Park in the country - the Lowell Historical Park ( Lowell Historical Park )  Click on this link to see what the mills and boarding houses looked like - it's an experience to tour this park with a handful of looms all going at the same time.  I ran a spinning jenny, a carding machine and two different looms as well on every tour, so I also have a pretty good idea of what some of the dangers involved were. 

If you're looking for a novel to shed some light on the plight of some of the first working girls in America, I can't recommend The Daring Ladies of Lowell.