The Saturday Evening Girls Club

A Novel

By: Jane Healey

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

In Boston’s North End, four immigrant women leave childhood behind - but never one another.

For four young immigrant women living in Boston’s North End in the early 1900s, escaping tradition doesn’t come easy. But at least they have one another and the Saturday Evening Girls Club, a social pottery-making group offering respite from their hectic home lives - and hope for a better future.

Ambitious Caprice dreams of opening her own hat shop, which clashes with the expectations of her Sicilian-born parents. Brilliant Ada secretly takes college classes despite the disapproval of her Russian Jewish father. Stunning Maria could marry anyone yet guards her heart to avoid the fate of her Italian Catholic mother, broken down by an alcoholic husband. And shy Thea is torn between asserting herself and embracing an antiquated Jewish tradition.

The friends face family clashes and romantic entanglements, career struggles and cultural prejudice. But through their unfailing bond, forged through their weekly gathering, they’ll draw strength - and the courage to transform their immigrant stories into the American lives of their dreams.

©2017 Jane Healey (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Great Story & Performance

I enjoyed this very much. Some of it was predictable, but it was still a great story. The performance brought the story to life. Recommend this as a coming of age story.

Not my style

If you prefer John Grisham, David Baldacci, and James Lee Burke, this is not your book. This is a story of immigrant girls from a variety of backgrounds growing up together. It has everything a young girl of the past might want in a story. The struggles with family, belonging, being female, and finding love are all there, I am just not interested. However, I finished it and that says something. I listened and read the Kindle version alternately. I found I liked reading it better, but if you read you have to sit still and if you listen, you can walk, drive, or clean house. It wasn't badly written, but I can't imagine it becoming a classic. I would never have chosen it myself. It was a book club selection and I really wanted to attend the next book club meeting. I am female, 68, a former English teacher, twice-divorced, and definitely not a romantic. Keep that in mind when you decide whether or not to accept my verdict.

Absolutely Lovely!! 🥰

A delightfully sweet story about a small group of Italian/Jewish friends coming of age in the New World of America in the early 20th century. The narrator is fantastic (😍), and the whole thing just completely draws you in. Family, romance, independence and the pull of the old world ways vs. the new world. So well done, and highly recommended.

awesome

enjoyed the story of the 4 girls and their challenges and their success in life. The narrator was fabulous.

A DELIGHTFUL COMING OF AGE STORY OF FOUR CLOSE FRIENDS…

I enjoyed this book so much! I can’t say I loved it quite as much as I did “The Beantown Girls,” also by Jane Healey (that book surprised me), but I enjoyed this story enough to listen to it twice.

The story is set in the early 1900’s at a time when women had so few rights and opportunities. There are four girls featured in the story; two are immigrant Italian and two are Jewish. From their early teens, they have belonged to a group known as the Saturday Evening Girls Club. It’s a a group in which the girls meet and is directed by two strong, savvy businesswomen who love all 40 members of the group and guide them as they grow from young girls into womanhood.

The four girls featured in the story develop a bond so tight that they are more like sisters than friends. They are there for each other for EVERYTHING — death, bad relationships, sudden job loss, prejudice in the community against immigrants and even a form of prejudice at home where girls are viewed as “less” than boys.

One girl has a burning desire to attend college and to become a doctor. Her mother helps her to sign up for college courses in secret and the mother and friends keep her secret so the girl can work towards her dream without the father finding out because in his view is, “education is wasted on women.”

Another of the girls is a very talented hat maker. She longs to open a hat shop of her own. Her father thinks it’s a ridiculous thing for a girl to want her own business (“women should be at home having babies”)! He regularly invites Sicilian boys home for dessert after Sunday dinner (“forgetting” to mention to the daughter someone is coming) in an effort to match her up with a “nice Sicilian boy.”

Another of the girls is matched by a matchmaker to get married to a young man, who at the time of her engagement, she had only met once. In her parents’ day, this was common practice, but it wasn’t the dream of “modern American” girls. Initially, the girl is terrified, but her friends get her through it.

The last girl’s father was an alcoholic who had gambling debts and owed some very bad people money. The son of one of the men the father owed took an interest in the girl. She was trapped in a relationship she didn’t want with a man she could barely tolerate. But, over time, she came to see this hateful, bigoted, controlling (but very rich) man as her and her family’s ticket out of poverty.

Her friends knew this man would be a disaster for her. They did everything they could think of to change her mind right up until her wedding day. Tensions and angry feelings ran high and fractured the friendships in many ways.

Through all of this, the girls thought about how they had gone from girlhood to womanhood together and how the marriage of the first girl would change the dynamics of the group forever. They were all delighted for the first girl getting married, and yet sad, all realizing how their childhood was over and for the ways their group dynamics were changing so quickly.

There are elements of their story that I believe all women will relate to — the struggle as we change from girls to women to answer the questions in life about what we want our future lives to be — do we want a career, a husband, children, all of one, none of the other, some combination of the two, and the roadblocks we hit as we go on our journey. If we are very lucky, we have dear friends like the ones in this story we can count on while finding our way.

The narrator, Cassandra Campbell is one of my favorites. She did another fantastic job here. She does a terrific job with both Italian and Jewish accents for the parents who came from the old country. I find her voice to be very pleasing.

This book is an easy, pleasant read. If you read this book and like it, I highly recommend that you also try “The Beantown Girls,” by this same author.

Beautifully told story!

The narration for this story is incredibly well done. It is a very good story about women learning about who they are and figuring out how to go after what they want.

Absolutely Wonderful!

I love this beautiful story! Four friends struggling to do things different! Beautiful! Excellent performance!

Lovely story with a peek into the past

I love the story of friendship between four girls.I enjoyed the peek into what life was like in early 1900s America for women

delightful

just a delightful story to remind you of your own sweet friendships. and beautifully performed.

A sweet story

This book was slow the first half. However as the story came together it was worth waiting for. Keep reading