The sweetest thing

Atlanta, the 1930s. Perri Singleton attends the Washington Seminary, an elite school where her days fill with tea dances, parties and a full social calendar. Then a tragedy in her family overturns the life she has always assumed would continue.

At about that moment, a new student turns up. Mary Dobbs Dillard, whose father is an itinerant preacher, has come from inner-city Chicago to live with her aunt and enrol at the seminary. Dobbs is sure the worldly young ladies around her need reforming, and she means to set them right.

The two girls meet just as Perri's crisis breaks, and an unlikely friendship forms. Dobbs tries to steady Perri's faith, but her own certainties begin to loosen as she does.

Both girls are pulled into a mystery that runs along the social and racial divisions of the segregated South. The Great Depression is starting to press in on Atlanta's wealthy families, which adds pressure to the lives they have known. This is historical fiction with a Southern setting, told around two young women, and faith is a live question for both of them.