This book made me cry so hard! It was a beautiful, but heartbreaking historical fiction set in the 1930s. With a southern setting and a town filled with racism, hatred, and fear, this book spoke to me about our historical situations, but also noted today’s similarities.

I loved the emotional story surrounding the community and the people. Opal narrates this story, and ugh, I just felt her story. Her happiness and her heartbreak were mine to share. It was beautiful writing that created a character I was fully connected to.

Opal lives in Colored Town, and the acts that we are witness to through her story are horrific, but so important to read and understand. I highly recommend reading this story. It is beautifully written and utterly captivating!

Where to Find This Book:

Goodreads | Thomas Nelson | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

This summer has the potential to change everything.

The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt can sense a nameless storm coming. She hopes this foreboding feeling won’t overshadow her upcoming eighteenth birthday or the annual Founder’s Day celebration in just a few weeks. As hard as she works in the home of the widow Miss Peggy, Opal enjoys having something to look forward to.

But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal’s neighborhood of Colored Town, the tight-knit community is shaken in every way. Parsons’s residents—both Black and white—are forced to acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post-Reconstruction era town. To complicate matters, Opal finds herself torn between two unexpected romantic interests, awakening many new emotions. She never thought that becoming a woman would bring with it such complicated decisions about what type of person she wants to be.

In When Stars Rain Down, Angela Jackson-Brown introduces us to a small Southern town grappling with haunting questions still relevant today—and to a young woman whose search for meaning resonates across the ages.

Just the Facts:

When Stars Rain Down by Angela Jackson-Brown
Genre: Historical Fiction
Page Count: 386 
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Pub Date: April 13, 2021

Angela Jackson-Brown is an award winning writer, poet and playwright who teaches Creative Writing and English at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She is a graduate of the Spalding low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novel Drinking From A Bitter Cup and House Repairs.

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I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

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