The main character, Katie Dinsmore, is a teen born and raised on a tobacco farm near Tabor City, NC. She wants to go to college and earns money helping in a hardware store in town. Her dream was to be a journalist but at the time that was not a job for women. The story opens with Katie working in the store when a Negro family (the historical term used in Mrs. Baldwin's book as well as the term colored, also historically correct) comes in to make a purchase. Her Papaw enters to make the announcement and his excitement of the KKK parade that is about to begin. When he sees the family shopping in a white owned store he goes off on another tangent, scaring the lady and her children. The tension is already set to make this book a page-turner.
Katie's scheme throughout the story is to get a college education, but her family can't afford to pay her way. So her half-truths begin. She asked to go live with her grandparents in Charlotte, who are estranged from her dad but who also have the money to send her to college.
The book is filled with the half-truths that cover so much of all our lives, balancing the political and traditional norms of families who disagree. Her dad and her Papaw disagree on the rights of all people to live with equal opportunities. This disagreement wasn't just at the level of the working class, but it permeated to the upper-class society of Charlotte.
Another half-truth Katie finds herself entangled in is pretending to be someone on the outside that she knows she is not. She tries to please too many people for so many reasons that her life becomes filled with half-truths that harm others as well as herself.
She brought two of her pets, Josie the goat and Baccy her dog, with her to Charlotte. They are the comic relief in the story but also play an integral part in helping her discover who she is. Her grandmother's maid wants to work in the science field, but college for a black girl is even more impossible than college for a poor white girl. Katie's goat got ringworm. Grandmother's maid wants to help the goat so she can win a science fair project. Together, Katie and Lillian, the maid, sneak into her dad's funeral home at night for chemicals to help the goat. They overhear an NAACP meeting. The city plans to move the cemetery at Lillian's church so the city can use the land.
But there is yet more for these two girls to discover. There is a photo in the attic that contains both Katie and Lillian's family. When Lillian is required to take Katie shopping, the clerk mistakes Lillian as the shopper instead of the country girl with the rich grandmother. Lillian could be mistaken as white. Lillian must serve at a luncheon for Katie, where Katie refers to her as the help. She and Lillian already know the truth, but this slight causes a rift in their relationship that may be unfixable.
Heavenly Father, help us love one another as You love, not seeing the color of our skin or the traditions of our past. Help us love one another with grace and truth. In Jesus's name. Amen.
Hey Kids:
With parents' permission, I think this book could be used as a supplement to history lessons, project based lessons.
- Discuss with your parents and grandparents what life was like when they were growing up
- Katie needed to learn etiquette to participate in her grandmother's society. What forms of etiquette do you need to learn? table settings, passing food, taking turns while speaking?
- Visit an old cemetery - whose buried there? soldiers, family, children, rock markers, slave graves? Consider, those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.
- How can you show kindness to others who might need friendship?
- How can you work towards your life goals?