Fifteen years after her hit novel, The Help, sparked conversation and criticism of the portrayal of the lives of black maids in the South, Kathryn Stotttt is publishing a new novel.
Set in Oxford, Michigan in 1933, Calamity Club focuses on a group of women whose lives intersect with struggles to reach during depression. It will be published by independent media Spiegel & Grau in April 2026.
There were high expectations for a follow-up from Stockett. When it was released in 2009, “Help” was upset by its candid portrayal of racial inequality. It sold about 15 million copies, spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, and was featured in the Academy Award-winning film.
In a video interview from her home outside of Natchez, Michigan, Stockett admitted that writing a second novel in the long shadow of her debut would be difficult.
“The pressure definitely continued,” she said. “The fear of failure, that really weighs heavily on the writer.”
The novel also sparked acute criticism of the depiction of black characters and their speeches. Readers and critics found them to be insensitive and aggressive. Viola Davis, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film, added that she regretted attending later, and that she felt the film could not accurately capture the voices and lives of black women.
In a sense, the debate over “help” foreshadowed the “self-voice” movement in the literary world, which promoted more diversity in literature from writers that elicited their own cultural background.
Stockett said that “Help” likely hasn't found a publisher in today's environment, but he has no regrets about the way she told the story.
“I don't think 'help' will be published today due to the fact that white women were writing in the voices of black women,” she said. “I got a lot of criticism, but it started a conversation so it wasn't under my skin.”
“The Help” was inspired in part by Stockett's relationship with a woman named Demetrie Mclorn. He worked as a family maid and died when Stockett was a teenager.
The story, which takes place in Mississippi in the early 1960s, has multiple narrators. A black woman working as a nanny and housekeeper for a white family, Ibilene's outspoken friend Minnie, and a young white woman skeeter, terrified by the racism she witnesses.
Stockett's new novel is set in the isolated South and is also involved in racial issues, but not in person.
“Race is always in the background,” she said. “It's probably always in the background of books I've written.”
Stockett first began working on a Mississippi novel set in 2013 during his depression era. She learned how farm laws, child labor laws, and eugenics movements led to forced sterilization of women in prisons, and how Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic policy made married women who worked for the government.
The story is told by two white female characters. An 11-year-old girl who lives in an orphanage and a young Delta woman who came to Oxford in the hopes of helping her family through difficult times.
In 2020, after writing about 800 pages, Stockett felt stuck and almost abandoned the book. A friend who read the manuscript connected her to Julie Grau, co-founder of Spiegel & Grau. They worked for years without a contract and kept the project quiet. A few years later, they signed the contract. With next year's release, the book will be published simultaneously from the UK in the UK and in Canada.
“It can be really valuable to give writers the time and space to carry out that follow-up,” Glau said. “Protecting her from glare was really noteworthy and ideal.”
Stockett said she was so stubborn about her successful debut that she gave up hopes about how “Calamity Club” would be perceived.
“I can't believe it happened,” she said, “and I don't know what's going to happen again this time.”
