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Sunflower Sisters

Amazing Sunflower Sisters Event at Dame Farm

What a fun sunflower-themed event this was with the fabulous Robin Homonoff of Reading with Robin, at Dame Farm and Orchards in Johnston Rhode Island.

Robin and daughter Emily, photographer extraordinaire

Everyone got a copy of Sunflower Sisters, sunflowers and blueberries. My blueberries were gone by the time I made it home. Delicious!
Such a lovely crowd!
Denise Cabral sunflower fan

So happy I could do my first live, in-person event in so long with Reading with Robin. Follow Robin on Instagram here: @Robinkall, her photographer daughter Emily (for more of her gorgeous photos) here: @emilyhomonoff, and find Robin’s website here: www.robinkall.com/readingwithrobin

So much fun hanging out with wonderful readers!

Can’t wait for my next Reading with Robin event…she always makes it so much fun and goes above and beyond!

 

Sunflower Sisters

A Crazy Number of Bonnets in Sunflower Sisters

One of the best things about writing Sunflower Sisters was researching the Civil War bonnet. All three main characters wear them and Anne-May the plantation mistress is especially frantic when the war cuts off her supply of new ones.

I was surprised at the many different types: mourning, casual, dressy, sunbonnets, bonnets for field work, bonnets for short social calls, for longer social calls, special bonnets for church, for young girls, bonnets for every season. I love these old photos of women in their bonnets and the pics at the bottom of those that have survived from the period. Can you find my very own bonnet?

Sunflower Sisters

Sisters Just Make Everything Better.

One of the best memories I have is of my sister Polly Simpkins surprising me at the book launch party for my first book Lilac Girls, by coming down from her home on Martha’s Vineyard to The Corner Bookstore in New York. She’s one of those people who do those kind of things, goes out of her way to make other people’s lives better.

Though we couldn’t do in-person events this year, she’s supporting my new book Sunflower Sisters at her local bookstore, The Bunch of Grapes in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, our mother’s favorite bookstore when she was alive, and is bringing books to all my mother’s friends. I think my mom would love that she’s doing that.

If you’d like a little shot of bliss in your day visit Polly’s blog here: https://acupofkarma.com/ Don’t miss her amazing bead page.

Do you have someone in your life who goes out of their way to make people happy?

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Surviving the Deadly Killer Hoop Skirts of the 1800s

I learned so many interesting things about Civil War fashion while writing Sunflower Sisters but the story of the hoop skirt is one of the weirdest.

Big skirts were all the rage in nineteenth century America for they accentuated a woman’s tiny waist (and made easy shoplifting possible). But early on, they required multiple layers of heavy, stiff horsehair petticoats women hated. And so the “extension skirt” or hoop skirt was born.

But women soon found that fashion came at a price and many paid with their lives to be au courant. The New York Times reported that 40,000 deaths were attributed to crinoline fires during the height of the hoop skirt’s popularity. Even the little dog here is on fire!

Other hoop skirt deaths were caused by  hoops  becoming entangled in the wheels of a passing wagon or swept into the sea by a gust and then pulled under by the steel cage or caught in machinery while working.

 

In my all-time favorite movie The Piano Holly Hunter’s character Ida gets pulled down into the ocean by her piano, her heavy dress and hoop not helping her rescue.

Quite a price to pay for accentuating a tiny waist.