Kathryn Stockett · 2026 · road

Kathryn Stockett's 2026 novel, set in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1933 as the Great Depression bites. Birdie Calhoun arrives from her family's failing Delta farm to beg help from her socialite sister, and falls in with an orphaned girl and a woman wronged by the state's brutal eugenics laws. Together this band of underestimated women hatch an audacious scheme to take back control of their fates. The story is rooted in one small Southern town.

1. 1
   The Mississippi Delta

   Outspoken and broke, Birdie Calhoun leaves her family's failing farm in the Mississippi Delta and sets out for Oxford to ask her wealthy, social-climbing sister for help.

2. 2
   Oxford

   In Oxford she finds her sister's charmed life built on lies, an orphaned girl fighting to keep her spirit, and a woman wronged by the state, and with them founds a defiant, secret enterprise to claim what the world denies them.