Where the Lilies Bloom

Where the Lilies Bloom is a novel for younger readers by the American writer Vera Cleaver, published in 1969 together with Bill Cleaver. It was later made into a film.

The Luther family are poor sharecroppers in the mountains of North Carolina. The father, Roy Luther, is a sickly man, and he asks his second-eldest daughter, Mary Call, to take over his role as the head of the family when he dies.

His instructions are specific. She is not to tell anyone when he passes, because doctors, undertakers and preachers all take money, and because if anybody in authority learns that the children's father is dead, they will be split up and sent to foster homes, since none of them is of legal age.

There is also the matter of the landlord, Kiser Pease, who is interested in marrying Devola, the eldest daughter. Roy will not allow it, and he makes Mary Call promise that she will not permit it after he is gone either. Mary Call and her younger brother Romey help Kiser through a bout of pneumonia, and the novel follows what the children do to keep their father's death a secret once it happens.