From the book jacket: Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the ¾ meter of gospel music, knows she’ll never get out of Kentucky – but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline Wallace, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County.

My reactions:
I’m about a generation behind these girls, but I was interested in a story set in the late 1950s – an era when I was first becoming acutely aware of popular music and could hardly wait to grow up and join my cousins dancing to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino records. Audrey and Caroline are in a similar hurry to grow up, to be done with school, and to go out into the world. They desperately want something MORE out of their lives than small town Mt Sterling, KY can give them.

When the book opens Audrey is reeling from the death of her father, in the Korean War. She and her mother live with her Grandpap, who adored his son, and who encourages Audrey to play the piano like her Daddy used to do. Her mother, lost in grief, tries to find solace in a bottle of bourbon. Caroline’s family is still intact; her father, Sonnyboy, has a steady job “down to the ice plant,” while her mother, Mauris, does alterations in the back room of the local department store. But both girls are loners. Neither one deemed pretty or popular, they stick together until ….

Townsend has the two girls take turns narrating, so that several chapters are told from Audrey’s point of view, followed by several chapters from Caroline’s point of view, then back to Audrey, etc. In this way, the reader gets more of the story than either of the girls, who go long stretches without talking to one another, despite their very close friendship as children.

I remember the pain when my best childhood friend seemed suddenly to have “outgrown” me; when our interests diverged and we were no longer exclusively one another’s confidante. My heart broke for both Audrey and Caroline as I witnessed their growing pains.

Despite being able to connect with these characters, at least in theory, I found this a very slow read. It took me 12 days to read the book. I did NOT dislike it, but it just never really captured my attention. Still, Townsend is a talented writer, and some of the scenes she paints are very vivid. I’d definitely read another book by her. ( )

There is much to learn here, in the midst of the Great Migration North. Audrey and Caroline are best friends growing up in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, an inhospitable incubator for all but even more miserable for black residents. Audrey is a great pianist, like her late father, who joined the service to play music and ended up getting killed in Korea. Caroline has "good" red hair, but when her father murders her mother for seemingly no reason, she is left as caretaker for a younger sister and grandmother. The girls have adventures around town and know everything about what goes on in each small home. The author paints a vivid portrait of a struggling community mired in economic depression and all the baggage leftover from slavery and sharecropping. Her descriptions are so pictorial that the reader can feel the yearnings of the two girls to escape their surroundings and their sad destinies of cleaning houses for white women.

But coincidences and miracles do occur. Audrey's talent is discovered while she is playing at a funeral and she herself makes her own Great Move to Harlem and to the Apollo Theatre. Caroline seeks comfort amongst the men of Mt. Sterling and does not get trapped in a teenage pregnancy. Their stories converge in North Carolina, where Caroline finally accepts Audrey's invitation to join their band on the road at a gig. What follows is not tragic, but predictable.

This is a great moody book and reminded me of The Color Purple, with its jamming music and cast of women who are themselves cast down, but somehow rise. ( )

Beautifully written but sad tale of two friends, Audrey and Caroline, who grow apart. The book is written in first person, alternating between the perspectives of each young woman, so that you can see their failures in understanding each other's intentions. While it took me a couple chapters to get into the rhythm of the dialogue and narrative (not a negative), I really enjoyed what emerged. The characters, both primary and secondary, were complex and lifelike. There were a lot of rich literary elements in this novel that left me thinking about the story long after I would close the book.

I received a copy from Goodreads Giveaways in exchange for my review. ( )