Resonant with the emotional urgency of Alice Walker's Meridian and the poignant charm of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, this gripping debut novel explores the unlikely friendship between a precocious black girl and a mysterious white woman in a small Mississippi town during the early 1980s. Eleven-year-old Ella lives in racially divided Ricksville, Mississippi, near the site of the Freedom Summer Murders. Too smart for her own good, she loves God, Mr. Macabe, and Nate, the tough diner owner. To her irritated Ma and her mother's lover, Leroy, Ella is an unwanted nuisance, but she has a precious secret she keeps to herself. When a sharply dressed, well-to-do white woman named Ms. St. James appears, the Black side of town grows uneasy. Why is she befriending a little Black girl? As Ms. St. James begins tutoring Ella, their bond deepens, and Ella is willing to risk everything to keep her in a community eager to see her gone. Both Ella and Ms. St. James harbor secrets—knowledge contained in a black notebook that will lead to devastating consequences. Alternately told through their captivating voices and shifting from the 1960s to the 1980s, this coming-of-age story delves into the search for self-definition amidst a web of truths, lies, and historical narratives.
