A review by claudiamccarron
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice

4.0

As you might expect for a book written about an impoverished family in the 1900's, there's a lot of dated content regarding race and class here. That said, it's still compelling, with some laugh-out-loud lines I'll keep coming back to. I found the parts about the Wiggs family just going about their daily lives and interacting with each other the strongest--when the upper-class charity workers Lucy and Michael show up, condescension seems to replace genuine understanding.

A really interesting read that demonstrates and challenges ideas on poverty, alcoholism, and the deserving poor in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries that also still holds together as an entertaining story.