New York Times bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert transports readers to the summer of 1934, when a sensational murder shakes up the small Southern town of Darling, Alabama€"and pulls in the ladies of the Darling Dahlias€ garden club, who never let the grass grow under their feet when there€s a mystery to solve€¦
The eleven o€clock lady has always been one of garden club president Liz Lacy€s favorite spring wildflowers. The plant is so named because the white blossoms don€t open until the sun shines directly on them and wakes them up.
But another Eleven O€Clock Lady is never going to wake up again. Rona Jean Hancock€"a telephone switchboard operator who earned her nickname because her shift ended at eleven, when her nightlife was just beginning€"has been found strangled with her own silk stocking in a very unladylike position.
Gossip sprouts like weeds in a small town, and Rona Jean€s somewhat wild reputation is the topic of much speculation regarding who might have killed her. As the Darling Dahlias begin to sort through Rona Jean€s private affairs, it appears there may be a connection to some skullduggery at the local Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Working at the camp, garden club vice president Ophelia Snow digs around to expose the truth€¦before a killer pulls up stakes and gets away with murder.