YA Pick: In the Neighborhood of True

In the Neighborhood of True
by Susan Kaplan Carlton
Algonquin
2019
320 pages
ISBN: 9781616208608

Don't be fooled by the pretty pink cover and precious corsage; this pink book is one of the most important books of the year. Set in 1958, the message is timely today: love your neighbors. Don't judge people by the color of their skin, their religion, their family lineage, their financial status or their outward appearance. Judge them by the quality of their character. Sound familiar?


When her father dies suddenly, Ruth's family is forced to leave their urban lives in Manhattan and move to her grandparent's estate in Atlanta. The year is 1958 and race relations are at a boiling point in the South. Ruth is enrolled in an exclusive private school where girls of her privilege are given a genteel education.

Debutante season looms, and fish-out-of-water Ruth finds herself in lessons to learn how to be a Southern lady. No one has asked if Ruth is Jewish, and she never mentions it. Her mother is mortified and accuses Ruth of "passing" as a white deb, not a Jewish girl. Ruth wants to fit in and not cause trouble. Ruth joins the "pastel posse" of debs and hopes to be crowned Magnolia Queen like her mother and grandmother before her.

Ruth meets handsome golden boy Davis Jefferson and accepts an invitation to a dance. Soon she's dating him and falling in love. Everything is wonderful, and Ruth loves her new life.

In the "separate but equal" Jim Crow South, Ruth learns that Negros have to sit in the balcony at the movies and drink from different water fountains. She grew up in Manhattan and has never seen this before although she has to admit in her old neighborhood, she has rarely seen a person of color. The rabbi at her temple wants his congregation to support equality for all people, but  talk of politics and racial tension frighten Ruth.

When her temple is bombed, Ruth discovers Davis was there that night. He swears he had nothing to do with it, but Ruth suspects he's telling, "in the neighborhood of true," a lie. Ruth has a decision to make: embrace her religion and family or deny her background to live a lie. If she doesn't speak up, what kind of person is she?

Readers will love "vintage" details that bring the era to life, and cheer for Ruth as she navigates society and religion. Algonquin has another book winner! In the Neighborhood of True is sure to be on the top of every award list this year! The author does a brilliant job of creating unforgettable characters whose everyday decisions are complex and often unexpected.

Kudos to Susan Kaplan Carlton for bringing history to life and telling a story based on the real life bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation (The Temple) in Atlanta in 1958. Five suspects were arrested; one went on trial twice, yet all charges were later dropped.

Highly, highly recommended! You MUST read this book. It is amazing. In the Neighborhood of True would be a great whole class read and YA Teen Book Club read.

Southern Charmer: Tupelo Honey

 

Tupelo Honey
(Kindle)
Lis Anna-Langston
Mapleton Publishers
2016
247 pages

Now available as Kindle

Tupelo Honey will tug at your heartstrings and sing off the pages.  Set in the 1970s in a small Southern town, the story of young Tupelo begins with a picture of her daily existence. Tupelo's home life can only be described as broken and painful. Her mother is a wretched, broken, mean drug addict with a salty mouth and she shows Tupelo no motherly love but instead inflicting  intense abuse--both  physical and mental. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers. Mother's then boyfriend Nash is charming and sweet to Tupelo and believes in her. He becomes a constant in her life even though her crazy mother continues to push him away. Eventually Nash is lost to Tupelo when her mother grabs her and takes a "vacation" to California. Tupelo is homesick and using her wits figures out a way to trick a cop into sending her home. What Tupelo lacks in parents, she makes up in moxie.

Another coping mechanism is the existence of Moochi, Tupelo's imaginary dog/man friend who helps her out in tight situations. Tupelo is able to hold conversations with him and he gives her good advice and ideas.

Grandmother Marmalade does all she can for her granddaughter--taking her in when her own daughter has a bout with drugs or booze. Marmalade has her hands full with her two grown sons. Mental illness cuts a large swath in this family with both of Tupelo's uncles suffering from possible schizophrenia.

Readers will love Tupelo and empathize with her struggles to find a home and be loved. Through heartbreak, pain, fair, loss, desperation, Tupelo never loses her enthusiastic voice. Tupelo Honey is a wonderful book that teaches us  many lessons about love and family. It is a shame that it contains profanity which may keep it off of middle grade and middle school lists. I understand the use of the profanity. It is used primarily by Tupelo's drugged out, no good mother.

Readers will cheer for  Tupelo as she navigates the problem adults which seem to plague her life. When she sees Nash again I wanted to jump up and down for her! This is one book that proves that although  you can't choose your family, you can  choose where you belong.

Highly recommended grade 5-up with warning of profanity, drug abuse, violence.

Memoir Pick: Dimestore: A Writer's Life

Dimestore: A Writer's Life
by Lee Smith
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
2016
200 pages
ISBN: 9781616205027


Lee Smith's collection of personal essays embeds her as  the voice of Appalachia. Her life story reads like a country song of religion, love, life, birth, death, pain, suffering, and joy. She grew up the only child of a hard working shopkeeper and his wife. Smith's town was full of kin: cousins, uncles, aunts, and twice removed more distant cousins. Everybody who wasn't related to each other at least knew each other. There were no secrets in town...at least no long kept secrets. Church was the center of their lives: revivals, services, church suppers, prayer meetings, funerals, and baptisms.

Children ran though the hills, swam in the river, caught fish in the stream, played up and down in  all the hollers, and came home with a hand full of wildflowers or a jar of lightning bugs. Smith conjures up the magic and wisdom of a time and  a place so distant that most of us can't recall. Folks went to church on Sunday or faced the rest of the town's scorn. People stood at attention for the pledge and celebrated being American and free.

Mothers cooked three meals a day, kids ate a lunch packed in a brown paper bag, fathers sometimes sat down to dinner late, but they always had their dinner at the table. Main street consisted of the dimestore, the post office, a movie theatre, a fire house and not much else. Some topics were never talked about. Mental illnesses were called by gentler terms, "a bout," "an episode," "kindly nervous."  When someone died, the whole town took notice and brought dishes of food. Think "Mayberry RFD" with Loretta Lynn thrown in. The town of Grundy doesn't exist anymore having been flooded by the Army Corps of Engineers, but Lee Smith's love letter to a bygone town and time live on as an endearing place of love and family.

Smith pays tribute to writing and the love of reading. She includes passages of fiction and poetry written by some of her adult students. She celebrates the life and poetry of Lou Crabtree and spoke at her funeral. Lou was an elderly lady when Smith met her at a writing workshop she was teaching. Lou had suitcases full of poems and fiction and she wrote to please herself never once thinking of publishing. She wrote to soothe herself, to calm herself, to see something on the page that made her happy. That is what writing should be! Later, Smith includes a quote from Anne Tyler who said, "I write because I want more than one life." Not to get rich, not to be famous, not to travel or to be on television. Writing for the people in Smith's essays is the essence of their being.

Thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, this short read (200 pages) is satisfying for the soul. Smith presents a simpler way of life in the glowing halo of wistful nostalgia, but it's beautiful and ethereal.

Highly recommended for adult and mature readers and all book clubs. Anyone who loves small town America, the South, and Appalachia will love this book.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

Middle School Pick: Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy

Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy
by Susan Vaught
Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
2015
240 pages
ISBN: 9781481422765

Available March 3, 2015

Delightful, quirky, poignant, honest, and heart-breaking, Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy captures the heart of a small Southern town with its cast of forlorn and headstrong characters. While considered a book for middle grades and up, much of the content deals with very real "adult" problems: mental illness, child abuse, drug abuse, murder, and arson.

Fontana (Footer) Davis and her besties Peavine and Angel live in Bugtussle, Mississippi. That's part of the joke. The other part is that their town is named after a real bug. Footer knows this because she does on English paper on the name of her town. Days before this  the Abrams farm burns to the ground. Mr. Abrams' body is found but the bodies of Cissy and Doc are not recovered. The police think the fire killed Mr. Abrams and that the kids may have been kidnapped by a serial killer. This doesn't make sense to Footer and her friends. They decide to solve the mystery on their own.

As Footer begins to snoop around, she feels like someone may be watching them and she's right. Someone wants to know just what the kids are finding out about the fire and the missing kids. Footer's mom may know something, too. Even though she suffers from bi-polar disorder, Footer's mom clearly knows something. Now Footer is afraid what secrets she might uncover. Will her meddling cause a rift in her family?

The truth turns out to be even more horrible than Footer could dream up. How will the town and this family recover from its secrets?

I loved the setting and the "Southern-ness" of this book. Having Southern roots, I could relate to the pace, the heat, and the downright syrup. When someone says, "Bless her heart," in the South, it's not meant to be a compliment or a prayer to God. It means that the person is their own kind of crazy. Luckily, in the South, crazy is celebrated! (Think "Steel Magnolias")

Recommended grade 6-up.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received the ARC from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.

This review has been posted in compliance with the FTC requirements set forth in the Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (available at ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf)

Book Club Pick: Heading Out To Wonderful (now in paperback)

Heading Out to Wonderful
by Robert Goolrick
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
2013 (hardcover edition 2012)
292 pages

now in paperback

Poignant, passionate, and perfect, Heading Out to Wonderful weaves a cautionary tale for young men who dare to dream and young women who reach for the blazing stars.

Charlie Beale arrives in sleepy Brownsburg, Virginia, with a dream, a past, and a ton of money. He is a stranger to the people here, and they don't trust strangers. He buys land down near the river and keeps to himself. Charlie takes a job at the local butcher shop and becomes friendly with the butcher, his wife and young son. A single, good looking young man in a small town becomes fodder for the town's gossip mills; there are whispers about what Charlie does and what he really  wants.

Charlie just wants to buy land...a lot of it. He has a yearning to own property--a need so deep that even when he owns more land than anyone, he is not sated. Charlie doesn't have a name for what bothers him...until he sees...her. Sylvan Glass, the wife of the town's richest and most powerful man.

Sylvan is a country girl; she is a hillbilly with no education, but she has dreams. She always wanted to be a movie star or live like one. She is infatuated with movie star glamour and hires the best seamstress in town to sew her Hollywood style outfits. Sylvan dreams of money, glamour and romance. Through her rose colored glasses, anything is possible.  Charlie becomes her movie star and she becomes his muse.

It is only natural for masculine speciman Charlie and beautiful, dreamy Sylvan  to fall hopelessly in love. They share a bond so deep, so tangible, that it can only result in trouble. The duo is destined for tragedy from their first encounter.

Goolrick builds a great story layer upon layer, deftly telling the story of Charlie and Sylvan's star-crossed romance while he builds the back story of a young boy's coming of age story--where the boy has to accept that his hero is not perfect.

Heading Out to Wonderful will resonate with  readers. The setting of small town post-war Virginia harkens back to Mayberry RFD, and you expect Gomer or Andy to wave hello to you. This is Anywhere, USA--1948--and it couldn't be more nostalgic.

The novel has a tragic ending, of course, but one I wasn't prepared for. I loved the storytelling and I loved the love story, but it took me two weeks to digest this story. It is a beautiful story and it is a terrible story. There is much to discover here for book club members.

Highly, highly recommended for mature readers and book clubs. Grade 9-adult. Sex and mature situations.

FTC Required Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. I did not receive monetary compensation for this review.