This novel follows the summer of three characters in 1960s Alabama.

Tab and Tina are dragged off to the Highlander Folk School by their shockingly liberal Aunt Eugenia. Tab resents her aunt's antics, and she has no interest in the Civil Rights movement.

Charles is Tab and Tina's father. He runs a cotton plantation, lives in town, supports the same long-shot for governor he has for years, and does his best to make do.

Maudie was a patient at the Tuskegee Polio Clinic and took the first opportunity to get out. When she signed up to run a voting school at a poor black church, she was let down to see it was a backwoods building in a gully off the main road.

Lovingly written, this novel will stick in the reader's heart for a long time. Through the long-ago summer's events, every day happenings and unusual situations reveal the range of issues raised by the movement. Naivety, willful blindness, hatred, love, and a host of other emotions bring the reader into a sad, but marvelous era that should never be forgotten.

-C.W.

Back to "D" - Review look-up by Author

Back to "S" - Review look-up by Title

Back to "5-Books" - Review look-up by Rating

Back to "Fiction" - Review look-up by Genre