The Cigar Factory: A Novel of Charleston (Story River Books) Paperback – August 24, 2016

This is a historical fiction. Michele Moore has done a brilliant job putting together a story of life working in the Cigar Factory in Charleston, now converted to condos and home of Garden & Gun Magazine. The vivid description of smells and reactions waft from the pages. The knowledge offered on how cigars were made from which strain of tobacco leaf to use and in what order to place the leaf was fascinating. I attended a lecture where Michele showed photographs of the factory depicting women packed elbow to elbow on one floor and black women in the basement sitting on baskets while the white man watched over. She shared her research from published writings to interviews with her aunt and father who worked in the Cigar Factory. Michele captured the dialect of Gullah and GeeChee beautifully. So few authors are allowed to do this. I appreciated the Glossary at the beginning as it helped to refer back while reading dialog. The story is carried over many years from 1917 to 1940s when Charleston began building the many bridges you see today...the strike that helped change for the better for cigar factory workers. Michele made certain to weave individual stories following the characters through to the end. Well done.

. . . onah tek dis book an’ put puntop yuh to-read list, shooo!1893 – 1946, Charleston, South Carolina. Cassie, Brigid, Meliah Amy, and Binah all work at the cigar factory on East Bay Street, but they don’t all work on the same floor. Negroes, the basement. Whites, the fourth floor. Only the tobacco and the cigars in process move between floors. Moore wraps her characters in history, in rich sensual imagery, and the bright warmth of the Gullah-Geechee languages spoken by all, buckruh, high buckruh, ma’magole, whatevah yuh be. Dis de mores bes’ book ebuh. Fuh true. When oonah finish, yuh no hol’ um cheap, no suh. T’engk yuh, Miz. Moore, True-mouth! Much wuk. Much trute!

This is an entertaining and educational look into Charleston during a period that most of us know little about. I appreciated the two distinct voices of the time living in the same space but with quite different experiences. It takes a couple chapters to get the rhythm of Gullah language but once it "clicks" it's an incredibly entertaining aspect of the book I also appreciated that it wasn't a tale of the have vs. have nots - something many Charlestonian writers like to contrast. Rather, this is a comparison of two regular women struggling with class, race, job, and living on the edge at a time when many lived on the edge.

Wow! While this is a fiction book, the very real historical background was outstanding! She totally captured the Gullah culture and language idioms. Great writing, and eye-opening history of the southern cultures. While I currently live near Charleston, SC now, I was born and bred up North. They did not teach this kind of realism in any school history courses. It was easy to see why Pat Conroy wrote the forward. Amen.

I am a Charlestonian, an English major, and somewhat of a literary snob. In my humble opinion, this is the best southern novel since Prince of Tides.Michelle Moore has written an extraordinary period piece set during the two World Wars. It is as if she wrote two novels about different families, one white, and one black, and then braided those novels together by having their lives intersect at the Cigar Factory at which they are employed.I was amazed at the amount of research that went into the novel, and yet is presented in a fashion which makes the story more interesting, not a history lesson. The voices of the Old Charleston, and African American Gullah, are accurate and authentic. The characters are 3 dimensional, and grew to be like family as I read… flaws and all, I loved them and cared about what happened to them.I look very forward to reading Michelle Moore’s next novel!

Never knew this story about cigar making in the south, actually never thought how it was done. So, this book, even though a novel, was very informative about this procedure and also the women who were involved, both black and white, and what they endured so that men could have a good smoke. I have since done some other research and find the historical story of the novel to be factual. Characters, although they are based on fiction, are very interesting. Michele Moore brings the characters and the city of Charleston to the limelight and to life.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are rich & complicated, as is the subject matter. I hated to see it end and look forward to future books from this very talented writer.

Excellent; having been born and raised in Charleston, I can attest to the authenticity of the voices contained in this novel. As a side note, years ago the Cigar Factory was sold to developers for condominiums, and in the process of renovation the heating ductwork had to be removed, and I was on the crew that removed it. Decades of tobacco residue had accumulated in the form of a very fine powder, finer than even pepper.