In 1921 Dillon, Texas Rose Lee and her black community are troubled with the whites. This is the book White Lilacs, by Carolyn Meyer. The whites of Dillon are wanting all the blacks to move out so they can make their part of town, Freedomtown, a brand new park. Rose Lee discovered this by working for Ms. Bell, the first person who wanted to change Freedomtown. The black people of Freedomtown are incredibly angry. They try to do everything they can to stop the whites of Dillon from gaining the majority on the petition they must sign to by Freedomtown. However, nothing Rose Lee and her town do works. The petition was rigged so that only the people who owned property could sign the petition. Everything in Freedomtown was bought out from Dillon. For only a fraction of what it's really worth! White Lilacs ends with the overview of Rose Lee's afterlife in a new town, talking all about her grandfather's prized white lilacs

This book was amazing! I loved it. Books of the past, mostly WWII, are very interesting to me, however this was different. A good different. Carolyn Meyer can really make the reader feel what the citizens of Freedomtown would've felt while being forced out of their town. The way she can describe every little detail is exquisite. This is one book that I would absolutely recommend to all my friends and family. ( )

White Lilacs by Carolyn Meyer was required reading in seventh grade at my middle school. However, recently, my mom and I were going through my brother’s bookcases trying to figure out what to put up on PaperBackSwap and when I picked up While Lilacs, my brother immediately said to let it go. I couldn’t remember if I liked it or not so I settled down to reread it.

It was difficult to read about the insensitivity of the time, but I can totally see why my school decided it was important for us to read it, especially since this story is based on Denton, Texas and Denton is about a forty-five minute drive from where I live. White Lilacs is a story with a view of history that we rarely see.

I think was really helped out this difficult topic was that everything was explained thoroughly in the book. The characters were very realistic and I think that the author did a good job of describing people, places, and things. However, getting from Point A to Point B takes a while and I can see why my brother rapidly lost interest. ( )