My Thoughts:

What I Loved: The stories follow three generations of a family in American really giving the reader a full view of the initial events in the timeline and the reactions to event caused, even generations later.

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How I Felt: This book is full of sadness. This is not a book meant to make a person happy, however, I felt everything the author intended us to feel.

Additionally, I noticed on Goodreads that this has a total of 13 reviews! I was so surprised. This book was at least nominated for awards, and just has not been found by many people. While I gave it a 3 star, it was still a good read, and I would recommend it to people.

My reasons for 3 stars: The book jumped around a lot in time. The writer tells the story in bits and pieces so that each story is in chronological order, but each chapter is a different part of one of her family’s lives. The reader jumps from 1950 to 1998 and back. It was an interesting way to write the story, but it did bother me. I got used to it and was able to get through the book, and I did appreciated the way the story unfolded by the end.

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To Read or Not To Read: If you enjoy historical fiction, or Civil Rights books, this would be a great read for you. It’s definitely worth picking up and trying it out!

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What’s This Book About Anyway?

This book tells the story of one girl’s life, along with her brother, daughter, and grandsons. Ruby Washington is newly widowed, and pregnant, and leaves South Carolina, heading to California with her brother. We follow her struggles through the 1960’s: her brother becomes a Black Panther and Lida, her daughter, has secrets that become detrimental to her. The third generation in this book is Lida’s two sons. They are constantly moving from one place to another trying to survive and find a place to call home.

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Footnotes:

#leavinganovel #richarddry #shejustlovesbooks #historicalfiction #civilrightsfiction #fictionbooks