A headstrong young girl runs away to find her mother and ends up on a road trip with a downtrodden African American woman and an abandoned white baby. Echoes of The Help and The Secret Life of Bees this had themes of family, real and imagined, southern culture and civil rights. Thoroughly enjoyed this library book. ( )

Reminded me of "The Help" and "Secret Life of Bees" ( )

Great book with a few twists I didn’t expect. I truly enjoyed this one. I rarely give 5 stars but it deserved 5. From the beginning it held my attention. ( )

Starla Claudelle is a nine-year old dynamo with red hair, who has a lot to learn about the way things are in the 1963 Mississippi she inhabits. She lives with her grandmother, Mamie, who is far from kind and loving, and she dreams of life with her mother, who she believes is a career singer in Nashville. When events unfold in a way that makes her feel she must run away, she heads out to Nashville alone and is given a ride by a black woman, Eula Littleton.

Eula is a damaged soul, but a sweet and caring person, and her meeting with Starla is God’s way of watching out for both of them. They are both misunderstood, but in understanding one another, they come to grips with what it means to be a complete human being.

He’d called her stupid, but she wasn’t stupid. She was just empty.

What ensues is a series of adventures that cause Starla to see first hand the racial divide in a way that she had never seen it before. As she comes to question the way of life she has always known, she develops a bond with Eula that is touching and scary for both of them.

I couldn’t explain the tangled up way things was making me feel. Mamie said I’d understand when I got older. But the older I was getting, the more confused I got.

As you get older, I guess the assumption is that the prejudices have been well taught and whether you understand better or not, you will at least understand the consequences of not adhering and accept this as just the way things are. Thank God for some brave people who stood up and said “no” despite the consequences, like Miss Cyrena, but also those, like Starla, who stand up for what they know is right, without knowing the possible consequences.

As she comes into contact with the Jim Crow world around her, she meets the worst of the white people and the worst of the black, she sees the fear that each can cause in the other, and she recognizes the basic human injustice that is taken for normal in her own world. But, she also sees the best of both, and that many struggle to be good and decent in a world that does not place enough value on those qualities. It is genius to see this through the eyes of a child, an innocent, not yet taught to hate someone for the color of their skin.

I had to hold on to the mad so the sad didn’t drown me.

I love the characters Susan Crandall has invented for this story, particularly Starla, Eula and Miss Cyrena. As improbable as the story was at times, they all seemed uncannily real and the predicaments strangely believable. The book reminded me of The Secret Life of Bees, another coming-of-age tale that addressed these issues. The mood and subject are the same, the story is quite different. Well worth the read.



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Excellent, wished there’s a continuous series.
Not a bookclub book. Recommended by Ruth. I finished reading it in July but out November 2021 so that it would coincide w my bookclub date.

This is my bookclub book for November 2021 ( )