Spring Dream by Rosamund Hunt

Carolyn Chandler is an attractive young woman (auburn hair, creamy skin, green eyes) who lives in Manhattan with her widowed mother, Vivian. Vivian’s life is a round of parties and it has been up to Carolyn to manage their home and finances since she was 16. Now, although Vivian is reluctant to leave her social life and Carolyn does not want to leave handsome Whit Dryden, her new beau, they travel 200 miles north when they get the news that Vivian’s sister, Blanche Storrow, had been hospitalized.

Sherburne is a depressed community where Blanche has lived for years, running her own small business, a hat shop. From her hospital bed, Blanche begs Carolyn to keep the store open until she recovers.

She found the light switch to the right of the front door and pressed it. The place sprang into brightness and she could see, with a single glance, all there was of the shop. Two long counters stretched the length of the store. A narrow aisle between them led to an archway at the back which had been closed off by a faded green curtain.

Carolyn’s first feeling was one of dismay. She had always thought of hat shops as glamorous places. Traditionally, buying a new hat was a pleasurable experience for any woman and guaranteed to raise her spirits.

Nowhere in this place could Carolyn see anything which might bring gladness to the feminine heart. The décor was dull, drab . . . And the hats themselves were unbelievably dreary. Carolyn walked the length of one counter, picking up this one and that one, putting it down again, while her feeling of revulsion mounted.

Vivian is horrified by Carolyn’s promise and unwilling to linger in Sherburne but her daughter is determined to do what she can, and she is assisted by Mike Ralston, a friend of Blanche’s who manages the city’s department store. Neither does Vivian want to move from the Palace hotel to Blanche’s poky apartment but another complication in their lives is learning their financial advisor has embezzled their funds. It is up to Carolyn not only to take charge of her aunt’s shop and bring it back to solvency but also to manage her aunt’s recovery and prevent her mother from spending money they don’t have. This is complicated by the economic conditions of Sherburne, a mill town. It takes hard work and adjustment of her dreams for Carolyn to take control of the situation and make a new life for herself, her mother, and aunt.

I was curious about this book when I saw it listed as a favorite with several others I know well so asked my library to search for it. One of the reasons I was intrigued was that Spring Dream reminded me of a childhood favorite, Polly Poppingay, Milliner, about a much younger girl who goes to stay with an aunt who has a hat shop. Unlike the trope where a spoiled young woman learns how to work hard/appreciate what she has, Carolyn is a responsible person from running a household although she did not have a career. She is able to understand her aunt’s dubious finances by organizing the shop’s paperwork and quickly realizes that the problem is not only outdated and uninspiring merchandise but also Blanche’s inability to get her more affluent clients to pay their bills. Carolyn puts her own limited funds into revamping the shop and inventory but when she insists that customers cannot buy new hats without paying their outstanding balance, she makes an enemy that threatens the success of the shop. Mike is from the affluent part of town and is invaluable helping Carolyn establish herself.

Carolyn’s spoiled mother resents having to stay in Sherburne and is horrified by the idea of working in a shop; she does nothing to make life easier for her daughter. However, once Carolyn coaxes her into the shop, it turns out Vivian has a gift for sales and can coax nearly anyone into buying a hat. It turns out Vivian is also good at taking care of Vivian and finds an eligible bachelor to escort her around town while Carolyn learns about small communities:

Sherburne was a city like thousands of others in the nation, but unfamiliar, all the same to Carolyn. She and her mother had traveled from time to time; but they had gone in the fastest jet planes to Europe and Florida and the West Coast. Carolyn had never spent as much as one night in a place like Sherburne.

This, she realized as she walked down Main Street, was how the majority of Americans lived. They owned the medium-priced cars she saw parked on the side streets, struggled to make payments on them and their homes, lived quietly and tried to give their children the advantages they themselves may not have had.

Spring Dream is the name of a gorgeous, exclusive model hat that Carolyn sees in New York and impulsively buys, thinking it will captivate passers-by from the shop window (justifying the expense). She is then horrified to find there are cheap knock-offs sold at Mike’s department store and blames him for sabotaging her sales. She won’t listen to his explanation, so he asks Ralston’s millinery buyer to tell her how the industry works.

In that moment Carolyn saw many things clearly. Sharpest in her mind was the fact that she had made an utter fool of herself. Accused unjustly the best friend she had ever had. Alienated the person who had offered her help and support, who had given her kindness and understanding and encouragement at a time when she had needed those things most.

Their estrangement ends when Mike leads a plan to save the Hazeltine Mills (and Shelburne’s already faltering economy) and Carolyn attends to support him and the shop’s future. Of course, by now Whit has lost interest in a working girl no longer conveniently located in New York but Mike has proven himself to be a valued friend and resource, worthier of her love. And, of course, the descriptions of the hats are great fun, although the importance of hats to women is so passé that the book seems very dated. While Carolyn does not have a vivid personality, the appeal of the book is her evolution as a small business proprietor and how she has to understand her new community to be successful.

Publication: Avalon Books, hardcover, 1963
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Career Novel
Setting: Upstate New York or possibly New England
Source: Interlibrary Loan from the Bangor Public Library