The Daring Ladies of Lowell

I whipped through this book and it was engrossing from page one.

It's an absorbing story based around true events that took place in Lowell, MA in the first half of the 1800s. Like other books related to the Industrial Revolution, it has a romance between a poor mill worker and the son of the mill owner with disapproving parents. But it's not nearly as predictable as you might expect.

One of the aspects I liked best was watching the evolution of the characters as they become more mature in their thinking, pondering how to balance the business pressures of the mill owner against the safety and conditions of the workers. What compromises are reasonable? What constitutes morality? And what happens to the justice system when powerful people show more try to control It?

This is creative historical fiction at its best and offers the reader an understanding of the origins of the labor movement in the US. show less

I whipped through this book and it was engrossing from page one.

It's an absorbing story based around true events that took place in Lowell, MA in the first half of the 1800s. Like other books related to the Industrial Revolution, it has a romance between a poor mill worker and the son of the mill owner with disapproving parents. But it's not nearly as predictable as you might expect.

One of the aspects I liked best was watching the evolution of the characters as they become more mature in their thinking, pondering how to balance the business pressures of the mill owner against the safety and conditions of the workers. What compromises are reasonable? What constitutes morality? And what happens to the justice system when powerful people show more try to control It?

This is creative historical fiction at its best and offers the reader an understanding of the origins of the labor movement in the US. show less

Alice Barrow is determined to be self-sufficient. A year after her mother's death, she leaves the family farm to travel to the Lowell factory to be a Lowell Mill Girl - a classy, hard working city girl who makes her own wages and is independent. Once at the factory she is thrown into a world full of difficult work, hazardous conditions, and a wonderful group of women whose friendship is the key to making it through the day. Although the hours are long, the rules are strict, and the women come from a variety of backgrounds, they have one important thing in common ... they all need the job.
Alice is truthful, brave, and remains dignified in the face of controversy. It is at one of these moments, when questioned by the Vice President on show more the dangerous working conditions of the mill, that she first catches the eye of Samuel Fiske. The eldest son of the Fiske family and heir to the family fortune, Samuel is intelligent, handsome, and lives in a drastically different world than the mill girls. His father rules industry with an iron first where money and family loyalty trumps all. In an era where whispers of reform drift on the breeze and civil unrest is growing, a romance between a Fiske heir and a mill girl blooms amiss the chaos.
Upon starting at the mill, Alice is quickly befriended by Lovey, a more seasoned and slightly out spoken mill girl. Lovey is full of adventure, spirit, and kindness. She is first to aid the other girls at the mill when danger strikes. However, when the danger turns towards Lovey, she is not so lucky. As news of her death rocks the already unstable mill world, Alice and Samuel quickly find themselves at odds when each must protect their own. Alice seeks justice for the life of her friend and safety for the women she works with, and Samuel is pressured to support his family.
What follows is a heart stopping trial, where love, life, and justice are on the line.
Kate Alcott has a talent for writing characters with depth and conviction. The characters in this novel have honorable strengths and realistic struggles.
Cassandra Campbel does a beautiful job narrating the novel. Her voice is soothing and brings the reader on a journey back in time to the 1800s where the story takes place. She gives Alice a voice and a persona that is fits her written description beautifully. Campbel has a talent for seamlessly switching between characters making the novel easy to listen to. Her voice adds strength to the passions of the mill workers searching for justice and reflects sorrow at the tragedies they face. Campbel's narration is a strong addition to a beautifully written novel. show less

Working as a mill girl offered women unprecedented freedom, but had terrible downsides. The work could be deadly and mill girls weren’t really part of their communities. The official search for justice for Alice’s friend devolves into a power play/blame game- wealth vs. religion, rich vs. poor. The characters are well developed and heartbreaking. Alice’s cynical dreamer friend Lovey, a company doctor with a cautious conscience, and others leave an impression. Alice’s and Samuel’s developing connection is sweet but tense with the weights of conflicting loyalties. The ending was thought provoking because I had mixed feelings about it and then pondered it.

You might be fooled by the title into thinking this is an expose of exploitive textile mills of the early 1800s and the feisty female textile workers who dared to advocate for improved working conditions.

You might be fooled by the text on the back cover into thinking this is an atmospheric historical mystery centered around the scandalous death of an innocent girl who may have been hiding a “dark secret.”

In fact, this novel is neither of these. In truth, it’s little more than an ordinary sort of “will they or won't they” romance dolled up to look like a lot more than it is.

Yes, some of the factual information about life in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts is interesting. And the murder, for a few chapters, appears to show more promise some suspense. But the author’s anachronistic use of 21st century idioms/dialog quickly robs the novel of its authentic atmosphere, and the mystery is soon revealed to be entirely unmysterious and merely a bit tawdry. This leaves only the romance between feisty textile worker Alice Barrow and wealthy, aloof mill owner Samuel Fiske to keep things interesting – which isn't promising either, since both characters are straight from the “Romance Author’s Guide to Protagonist Archetypes,” their personalities cartoonish and unconvincing. Add to these flaws an ending that’s improbably convoluted and embarrassingly contrived, and I’m afraid there just isn’t anything here worth the investment of time required to read it. Sorry! show less

I chose to read The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott for a Reading Through Time Challenge. The theme was Labor, Unions and the Working Class. Set in the mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts this is the story of Alice Barrow, who comes to work at the mill in 1832. She is escaping a life of farm drudgery but conditions at the mill are not much better. The mill workers put in long hours under dangerous conditions with low pay and the book does touch on the beginning of workers struggles for a better workplace.

Alice is chosen as a spokesperson for workers rights but finds herself falling in love with the bosses son, Samuel. The death of her best friend adds further conflict as Samuel’s family suppresses evidence that would help to show more prove her friend was murdered.

This love story blends class differences with industrial history and small town politics into an interesting story. The trial that dominates much of the book was based on a real-life trial on the death of a mill-girl, and this adds a great deal of authenticity to the story. Personally I could have done without the romance which I found superficial and would have preferred more about the struggle for justice and better working conditions that these young women were starting to be involved in. show less

When Alice arrives in Lowell in 1832, she's left her family's farm behind and dreams of making a new life for herself in the mills. When she arrives at the dormitory, Lovey and the other girls take her under their wing and she soon starts to see the harsh conditions, long hours, and dangerous work they do on the looms. Meanwhile, the owner, Hiram Fiske, is most worried about the bottom line. His son Samuel, however, sees the value in making changes and may have a bit of an interest in Alice herself. Then one of the mill girls is murdered, and the careful balance of power at the factory may shift dramatically.

There were aspects of this that were well done and interesting explorations in power struggles between mill owners, religious show more leaders, and the workers themselves but I kept wanting more somehow. Alice was a likable enough character, but I never quite "got" how she and Lovey became friends. The author tells more than shows, so I often reacted with a "But why?" when I was told a character felt a certain way, for example. Details about mill work were inserted somewhat awkwardly in conversation at times, as if the author wanted the readers to know a certain list of things but then get on with the story she wanted to tell. I was interested knowing that this was based on a true story - an actual murder trial that occurred in a mill town - and would have liked to have more information in the author's note at the back, which gave very little additional information and no bibliography. show less