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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Sep 2002, 304 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2003, 304 pages
In this lifelong story, Lilian and Myraleen struggle through dramatically changing times: From the stark realities of life in rural Mississippi, through the different sort of racism they find in workaday Philadelphia and France during World War II.
An epic and touching story of two best friends charting their uncertain way through segregation and war, to love.
In her funny, moving, and ambitious debut, Elyse Singleton introduces us to two inseparable and hard-minded idealists. Young Lilian endures the tribulations of Nadir, Mississippi, on the purity of her faith in people and her growing belief in herself. Her best friend, Myraleen, gets by on her sharp tongue and her unwillingness to give in-and perhaps because Lilian is always with her.
In this lifelong story, Lilian and Myraleen struggle through dramatically changing times: From the stark realities of life in rural Mississippi, through the different sort of racism they find in workaday Philadelphia and France during World War II. For these women, the road to maturity in the messy American century is long and ragged. Along the way, Myraleen falls for a Tuskeegee flier and Lilian for a German prisoner of war. And each time they reassert their oldest ideals, everything they believe in is tested again--most of all what love requires in such a world.
KELLNER
Russia
1951
LONG IN SUFFERING, QUICK IN LOSING-SEVEN YEARS. EVERY day, another season of winter whisked by, just like that. Did she think he had been killed? Or did she assume he had married someone who looked more like him?
He knew that to her he had become a man of dead promises. Yet, he remembered her elegant mind, the deep blackness of her hair, the liquid brown of her eyes, and the way her pearl earrings drew his eyes to the curve of her neck.
He did not know whether he would live out the day. And he had only one reason to care. The single thing that redeemed the world was that somewhere, she lived. Even now, in this endless winter, he could feel the warmth of her hand.
LILIAN
Mississippi
1930
...a flight of unsung hearts...
AS A GIRL, I LOVED ANYTHING WITH WHEELS OR WINGS-including Pontiacs, trains, bread trucks and hummingbirds-because they all had the power to get out of Mississippi. This is what I wanted to do, and couldn't do on the authority ...
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