Adele Myers’ historical novel is set in 1946 North Carolina where 15–year-old Maddie has been dropped off to stay with her aunt Etta for the summer in Bright Leaf, a town known for growing tobacco and manufacturing cigarettes. Maddie’s aunt makes gowns and dresses for all the local “tobacco wives,” the upper class women married to the big bosses in the tobacco industry.

When her aunt becomes sick soon after Maddie arrives in town, it’s up to Maddie and her assistant, Anthony, to make the season’s dresses. It’s a lot of pressure on the shoulders of the 15-year-old, but she’s been sewing for years and it looks like she’s capable of pulling it off. One thing I like about Maddie is that she’s so independent. She knows she doesn’t want to end up depending on a man the way that her mother depended on her father. The backstory is that Maddie’s father passed away in WWII right before the novel opens. So our heroine is not only missing her absent mother that summer, but she’s also still mourning her father.

When people around Maddie start to become sick, Maddie struggles with exposing the truth about the toxicity of tobacco, especially in an environment where nearly everyone around her depends on the plant to survive.

The prose style is simple and easy to follow. Myers sprinkles in a few old-fashioned expressions and details about the culture of the time. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did a good job of varying her voice to match the various characters. The story is in first-person in Maddie’s voice. The narrator is expressive enough to keep my attention, and the southern accent is subtle.