The Briar Club

The chapter includes recipes for Harland’s Fried Chicken and Bea’s Ragu.

It is now January 1953, and the novel follows the story of 28-year-old Bea Verretti. She has permanently damaged her trick knee after slipping on a patch of ice. This means she can no longer play baseball professionally. During World War II, the US promoted women’s baseball to fill the gap left by men who were fighting overseas. Bea played for eight years for several teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and became known as the Swinging Sicilian. Grace has nicknamed her Slugger. Bea loves the sport with all her soul and hates being sidelined. As the chapter begins, she is the girls’ physical education teacher at Gompers Junior High School but still dreams that someday she might return to the game. She even keeps a baseball bat in her room to stay in practice.

One day, the principal asks Bea to fill in as the home economics teacher for the rest of the term. The Briar Club finds this highly amusing since Bea doesn’t know the first thing about the domestic arts. She announces this fact on the night that Arlene’s boyfriend, Harland, is cooking fried chicken for the group.