Kirjahaku

Growing up in Alabama in the 1950s, two inseparable ten-year-old girls, one black and one white, discover the theft of money meant for polio victims and expose a racial injustice in the process. A first novel. Reissue.

John McMillan was only eight years old when his mother died and he was ripped, without warning, from his sheltered world of books and gentility. Now on his aunt's run-down tenant farm in southern Alabama, abused by his alcholic uncle and completely bereft, John longs for escape - his only hope for survival. He's about to get his wish in a way no one could ever predict...A twist of fate will bring John to the Bend, a black settlement that has become a refuge for outcasts, where he'll join Tuway, a black man who helps others leave the South and find a new life in Chicago. But neither will be ready for the brutal confrontation about to change their lives, challenge the prejudice of an era, inspire the courage of a people, and most of all, touchingly reveal the secrets of one boy's heart.

Embracing the conservative and discriminatory belief systems of her Southern hometown, Tab witnesses profound changes in the attitudes of her friends and family throughout the course of a 1960s gubernatorial campaign, which is marked by the establishment of a voting school for church members. By the author of Out of the Night That Covers Me. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Pat Cunningham Devoto had specific hopes for the women imprisoned at the Montgomery Women's Facility who participated in her book club for the better part of seven years. She hoped the books they read would give some respite from their daily prison life, and, at the same time, hoped the individual members might gain valuable knowledge that would have a positive impact on their future. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Instead, Devoto learned how to "brew” a batch of beer—right under the guard’s noses; how to assume a stone-faced expression while a guard berated her because she brought books—to the book club; what it’s like to have a wedding, complete with trimmings, while imprisoned; how to anonymously pester the parole board from the prison phones; how to make hand sanitizer punch; and how to use PREA cards in the exact opposite way they are meant to be used. In other words, the best way for a self-proclaimed naïve, middle-class, law-abiding novice like Devoto to learn how to be a crook was to go to prison. But in the beginning, of course, she hadn’t a clue. While most of her teachers are now gone, in one way or another, Bookin’ in the Big House is Pat’s remembrance of them and of the place they lived.