Book Club @ The Homestead

“The Blue Bottle Club” by Penelope J Stokes

Faced with the grim realities of the 1929 Depression, four hopeful girls treasured their youthful aspirations above all else. They wrote their dearest dreams on small pieces of paper and on Christmas Day, in a cold, candlelit attic, secretly placed them inside a cobalt-blue bottle, vowing to remain friends for life.
Sixty-five years later, Brendan Delaney, a local television news reporter, unexpectedly discovers those slips of paper in that dusty, forgotten bottle. She embarks on a passionate quest to interview the now-elderly women and finds that their youthful dreams have been diverted, disrupted, and even devastated. One heart was broken by a fiance’s tragic past; another turned toward vows of chastity. A baby was born to an unwed mother; a daughter lost her father to suicide. Like leaves in the wind, the friends’ dreams turned and tossed one way, and another. Some vanished forever.
But there is a common thread in each of the women’s lives, and Brendan thinks she’s found it. In following that thread, her life, dreams, and faith become forever intertwined with theirs.