Sunday, October 01, 2006

Say You Are My Sister
by Laurel Stowe Brady
(HarperCollins; ISBN: 0060283084) Twelve-year-old

Mony Keddrington turns to her older half-sister Georgie for comfort and strength when their mother is killed by a tornado. She doesn’t look much like Georgie, but that doesn’t matter to Mony who has learned from her Pa that “family is family.”

On a trip to town, Mony witnesses the realities of racial issues in her Georgia town when the barber is thrown through the plate glass window of his shop for giving a black man a haircut, a crime under the Jim Crow laws.

When their Pa is killed by a bull, the girls are determined to take care of themselves and their baby sister, Keely Faye. Magnolia Hewitt would like to take Keely Faye to raise as her own and she uses her position as the banker’s wife to attempt to force Georgie to give up the baby. Mony begins to learn who Georgie really is as they struggle to keep their family together.

Brady’s story is entertaining, as well as important as it looks into our country's history of racial discrimination.

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