Little Souls, by Sandra Dallas

A story with characters who blaze a trail through a frontier of emotions and dream about clowns.

The narrator, Lutie Hite, tells a story about a journey through the few months of the story’s timeline, what she called her “long nightmare.” The story began in October, 1918 in the city was Denver, Colorado. The Spanish Influenza was raging, but there was a parade for the soldiers in France. Otherwise, it was a normal day for Lutie at work, including, as she traveled home on the streetcar, a man who stared openly at her legs when her skirt hiked up while she descended the streetcar’s stairs. And then she arrived home to find her sister, Helen, kneeling over a man’s body, a bloody ice pick in her hand.

Little Souls includes, in addition to the time when the plot occurs, earlier periods when Lutie and Helen were children growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa and a later period when a third generation is added to the character list, both of which add veracity to the plot. The story is much more than a snapshot of several months in Lutie’s life. The plot is an amalgam of many events with which the characters must cope: the death of parents, children, siblings and loved ones, and the survival of desperate circumstances that have a lifelong effect. Sandra Dallas brilliantly depicts through Lutie’s eyes both joy and sorrow, as well as bleakness and hope. The war and the flu are only a backdrop for a sensitive rendition of the suffering that occurred during a desperate time and the inner strength that propelled the novel’s characters to surmount the adversities they faced. War and pestilence don’t keep away villains. Crimes happen.

Lutie’s life was one of hard choices. She was not alone. The other characters struggled as well, facing the heartbreak of the death of a mother or a son, and the robbery of innocence. Three little souls in the story triumph over heinous crimes, each in her own way. Sandra Dallas brings the people and their struggles to life in a credible manner. There are no superhuman feats, and around every corner that the story turns the reader is as likely to find catastrophe as good fortune. Some characters are philosophical about the cards they are dealt. Some are religious. But Sandra Dallas takes no sides, and never preaches. She only applauds the fight against adversity her characters demonstrate, no matter how they find their strength. Her words are beautifully written and her episodes are comfortably strung together. Little Souls is a magnificent story that readers will carry in their hearts for years after putting down the book.

NOTE: The manuscript reviewed is an Uncorrected Digital Galley. The novel isn’t scheduled for publication until April 2022. This review is only posted on NetGalley and my website until publication, and references in the review to particular circumstances and phrases may be changed before publication.