The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree (Berkley Prime Crime)

description of what went on during the month of May 1930, when some things happened that shouldn’t have happened in any God-fearing town, much less in Darling, Alabama, which has 4 churches, 907 good Christian people (soon to be 908, because Mrs. Perkins is expecting any day now), and only a few Bad Apples.
    Of course, in a story, it’s usually the Bad Apples who get all the attention, so we want to warn you not to pay too much attention to them. You should look instead at the way everybody else is behaving and doing what they ought to do, which is to help one another and follow the Golden Rule, even though (as a certain few would like to have you believe) it sometimes turns out that he who has the gold, rules. In this case, silver and gold, both, But we won’t say anything more about that, since we don’t want to spoil the story for you.
    Anyway, we just wanted to let you know that we recommend this book because it’s true, most of it, And because the way the author has told it shows you how much the Dahlias care about our Darling and want to see things done right in our town, even when things are bad all over the country, with a lot of people out of work and the best help the Red Cross can offer is ten cents a day for food,
    Well, that’s enough of that, The Darling Dahlias always try to look on the bright side. As Aunt Hetty Little says, we keep our face to the sun so we can’t see the shadows, which is why we plant sunflowers and marigolds and cosmos in amongst the collards and sweet potatoes and okra in the garden, And speaking of gardens and such, we may not have just a whole lot extra, but we’re always willing to share what we have. So we’ve given the author some of our favorite recipes and tips for making whatever you’ve got go further, last longer, and taste better. She says she’ll put them at the end of the book. We hope they’ll help you, if times are as hard at your house as they are here in Darling,
    We hope you’ll keep looking on the bright side, too, And remember what we said about Bad Apples.

    Elizabeth Lacy, president
Ophelia Snow, vice president & secretary
Verna Tidwell, treasurer

The Darling Dahlias Club Roister, May 1930
    OFFICERS
    Miss Elizabeth Lacy , president. Secretary to Mr. Moseley, attorney at law, and garden columnist for the Darling Dispatch.
    Mrs. Ophelia Snow , vice president and secretary. Wife of Darling’s mayor, Jed Snow.
    Verna Tidwell , treasurer. Secretary to the Cypress County probate clerk.

    CLUB MEMBERS
    Earlynne Biddle, married to Henry Biddle, the manager at the Coca-Cola bottling plant.
    Mrs. Bessie Bloodworth, Darling’s historian. Owns Magnolia Manor, a boardinghouse next door to the Dahlias’ clubhouse and gardens.
    Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson, wife of the owner of the Darling Savings and Trust Bank. Specializes in pure white flowers.
    Mildred Kilgore. A collector of camellias, Mildred is married to Roger Kilgore, the owner of Kilgore Motors, and lives near the Cypress Country Club.
    Aunt Hetty Little , oldest member of the club, town matriarch, and lover of gladiolas.
    Myra May Mosswell, owner of the Darling Diner and an operator in the Darling Telephone Exchange. Lives in the flat over the diner.
    Miss Dorothy Rogers, Darling’s librarian. Miss Rogers knows the Latin name of every plant and insists that everybody else does, too. Lives in Magnolia Manor.
    Beulah Trivette , artistically talented owner/operator of Beulah’s Beauty Bower, where small groups of Dahlias gather almost every day.
    Alice Ann Walker , bank cashier. Her husband, Arnold, is disabled.

ONE
    The Dahlias in Full Bloom
    Sunday, May 11,1930

    Elizabeth Lacy had been a member of the Darling Garden Club ever since Mrs. Blackstone started it in 1925, and president for the last two years. But she couldn’t remember a more important meeting. Today was a special day. They were celebrating the opening of their clubhouse.
    Their new clubhouse, Lizzy thought proudly, as she called the meeting to order after their tour of the garden—although of course the house wasn’t new at all. It was the old Blackstone house at 302 Camellia Street, one block west of the courthouse square and one block south, next door to Bessie Bloodworth’s boardinghouse, Magnolia Manor. Mrs. Blackstone, a lifelong resident of Darling, had died a few months before at the grand age of eighty-two, leaving her house to the club, along with almost an acre of garden in the back, a half-acre vegetable garden