Title: “Llano County Mermaid Club” The Lynn and Lydia Miller Southwest Fiction Series Author: Kathleen M. Ridgers Publisher: University of New Mexico, unmpress. com Published: 2025 ISBN: 978-0-8263-6826-3 Paperback, 251 page
“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with books,” Eudora Welty, Pulitzer Prize winning author.
Sandhill is a windy, arid place on the High Plains of eastern New Mexico.
This novel weaves together the lives of those who have called this small town home for generations. Two families are irreversibly linked through the innocent bonds of childhood friendship. Decades later they are still haunted by a shared tragedy.
Marigold, the protagonist, is an average teenager growing up during the turbulent 1960s and 70s. She is the middle daughter of Letty and Dorian Hubbard.
Letty was nineteen when she gave birth to their first daughter, Clover. Two more girls, Marigold and Tansy, were born within a few years. Dorian moves from job to job and eventually finds a career as an insurance salesman. This entails long hours away from the family.
The sisters and their parents share a tiny rental house on “the wrong side of the tracks.” The young girls find opportunities to interact with their immediate neighbors.
Tansy and Ruthie, whose mother works in a bakery, become best friends. Marigold and Melody, who lives with her mother and Grandma Dot, meet in first grade. Clover is more of a loner who prefers to read rather than befriend strangers.
Marigold is about 10 years old when she realizes that her parents each lead separate, secret lives.
Letty takes the five girls everywhere with her as she does errands. The girls hang out with Letty after school and on weekends while she does routine household chores such as hanging laundry on the clothesline. Once in while Dorian takes the five girls on a road trip to places like Blue Hole, a small lake more than an hour from Sandhill.
The young girls form the Llano County Mermaid Club. They swear an oath of loyalty and promise to always abide by the club’s ten rules.
Their daily lives develop a new pattern when aspinster librarian befriends Letty and encourages her to read. Letty begins with books by women authors. These books changed her view of women, marriage, and family life.
The young mother purchases a used manual Remington typewriter and begins writing letters to a number of well-known female authors including Eudora Welty who won a Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist's Daughter, Grace Metalious who wrote Peyton Place, and Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening.
Marigold and her sisters discover the letters in a drawer of the vanity table that Letty had converted into a desk.
“And to think, it all started with a book Mama checked out from the public library,” recalls Marigold.
The sisters’ flashback memories and Letty’s letters tell the story of the events that have haunted Marigold for decades.
“Mama told us stories to try and give us hope. After you [Melody] died, I heard Mama crying one night as I was getting ready for bed. I found her alone in the parlor. . . .I reminded her how she helped us believe in magic and how her stories inspired us during times of struggle,” writes Marigold in an ode to her best friend.
After Letty passes away, Clover honors her mother’s legacy by putting Letty’s desk and typewriter in her Sandhill book shop.
Following their father’s death, the recently widowed Marigold sits at Letty’s desk looking at her mother’s typewriter. She begins writing her first novel, Landlocked in Llano County: A Memoir by Marigold Hubbard.
The dedication reads: In memory of Letty Hubbard, The sixth mermaid, 1940-2001 SIDEBAR
American author Kathleen M. Rodgers was born in Clovis, New Mexico, and currently lives in north Texas where she is writing her sixth novel.
“I am a novelist who specializes in contemporary fiction with an emphasis on family dynamics, friendship, social issues, mystery, and magical realism,” Rodgers explained in a recent interview.
Her novels include The Final Salute (2014), Johnnie Come Lately (2015), Seven Wings to Glory (2018), The Flying Cutterbucks (2020), and The Llano County Mermaid Club (2025), which was named BOOK OF THE WEEK for Oct. 1 in the Albuquerque Journal newspaper.
She is a former contributor to Family Circle Magazine and the Military Times.