Too Early for Flowers

Sipolski bases this historical novel on his mother’s life story. Iris left her small town of Hardscrabble, Ill., in 1940 at the age of 18 and headed for Washington, D.C., with dreams of traveling the globe. Her aspirations were short-circuited when her husband died, leaving her to raise two small boys. After coming back home to Hardscrabble, Iris faces the difficulties of living in her childhood home with her mother and sister, as well as confronting and finding strength in the challenges that come with the onset of polio in her youngest son. Despite these obstacles, Iris finds full-time employment and soldiers through her hardships. Later, she remarries and has a third son before tragedy strikes once again. Readers will find themselves immersed in Iris’s struggles as well as in the social dynamics of an earlier era, when doctors offered few remedies for diseases such as polio. Sipolski brings emotion and energy to this story of the uncommon woman at his family’s center. (BookLife)