Review: A Lot to Consider
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 4, 2013
As I read Victory Garden, it was hard to visualize when women didn't have the right to vote, when they were unequal despite all the decent and reasonable knowledge to the contrary.  Police arrested women for demonstrating and force fed them in prison.  The Anti-Suffrage Movement led the charge against women voting, headed by--you guessed it--other women, just as whenever a male sexist guilty of a hate crime today wants off, he hires a woman.  World War 1, the war to end all wars, gets mixed up in all this, as does a victory garden, where the protagonist, Rose Scofield, tends flowers rather than vegetables.  She's her own person, as is her father, who's against the war and loses his job, as does Rose because she fights for women's rights.  The love story with Adam Bell develops, despite Rose's stubbornness, the highlight being a visit to New York City's east side slum, Adam's home.  All in all, the book probably attempts too much, but if you set a book in 1918, how could you not?  Oh yes, the Spanish flu hits.  The book cries out for better formatting.