The Funeral Dress

September 23, 2013
Emmalee Bullard pays tribute to the dead in a peculiar way--fashioning large wooden crosses together for each member of her community who passes away. When she drops out of school, this craftiness helps land her a job sewing collars at the Tennewa Dressmaking Factory, where she befriends her boss and mentor Leona Lane. One day Emmalee goes into work with stomach pains only to learn she is pregnant later when goes into labor. Forced to live with her abusive father, Emmalee and her newborn's future is bleak until Leona offers up a room her and her husband's trailer for them to stay. In an unfortunate twist of fate the very next day, Leona and her husband die in a car accident. Emmalee mourns the loss of her friend by making her a burial dress , requiring her to leave the baby with estranged relatives for a day. A decision that lands Emmalee in a nasty custody battle with family, and forces her to divulge the controversial identity of the baby's father. Gilmore (The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove) tactfully draws parallels between the two main characters, Leona's life and Emmalee's presentâa classic formula that makes for dynamic characters. The friendship between these two protagonists serves as a streak of light in this mainly morbid tale.

August 15, 2013
A young woman in Appalachia battles poverty, discrimination and her own insecurity in this moving and memorable third novel from Gilmore (Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, 2008, etc.). In 1974, when Emmalee Bullard gets a job sewing collars at the Tennewa shirt factory, the 16-year-old begins the escape from the miserable poverty in which she was raised. After her mother died years ago, her care fell to her father, Nolan, a handsome, angry drunkard who barely kept her fed or clothed (her schoolteacher took to bathing her in the janitor's closet). At Tennewa, she is seated next to Leona, a secretive woman, broken from the death of her baby boy years ago. Childless, Leona and Curtis still live in the starter trailer they bought as newlyweds; she takes in extra sewing, and he devotes his life to their church. Leona is hard, but she is the closest thing Emmalee has had to mothering care in years, and so, when, three years later, Emmalee has a baby she calls Kelly Faye, Leona invites them to live at the trailer. Tragedy strikes the day before they're to move in: Curtis and Leona are killed in a car accident. The funeral director allows Emmalee to sew Leona's burying dress, so she drops Kelly Faye off at her uncle's (his childless wife can't wait to get her hands on the baby) and goes to the trailer to work on Leona's dress. There, she sees the room Leona prepared: a bed and a crib, baby toys and books, small sweet clothes Leona sewed herself. Heartbroken, Emmalee sews the dress out of red damask and then becomes ill. When she goes to retrieve Kelly Faye, her uncle refuses to give her back, claiming the baby would be better off with them and all they can offer. Shunned by the community, Emmalee's not sure she's fit to be a mother, but then a surprising thing happens--the women of Tennewa begin to stand behind her. A revelatory novel that offers an evocative account of the lives of Appalachian working women.

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August 1, 2013
In a tender, graceful novel that addresses questions of class and social isolation, Gilmore (The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, 2010) tells the story of a motherless young girl raised in poverty in a small holler in Tennessee. When 16-year-old Emmalee Bullard lands a job as a collar maker in a textile mill in 1974, she finally finds the camaraderie she has longed for. Her alcoholic father, bitter and overtaxed by the responsibility of raising his daughter after his wife's death, has spent more time berating Emmalee than helping her. Then Emmalee becomes pregnant, and Leona, a seamstress who mentored her, offers Emmalee a place to live and a helping hand. When Leona and her husband are killed in an auto accident, Emmalee feels compelled to sew a funeral dress for her dear friend, despite the overwhelming disapproval of the ladies at the local church. Gilmore imbues her story with a deep compassion for the lives of the working poor while offering a vivid picture of factory life and the sense of community it inspired among its workers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)