Ruth S

The 50's and 60's were fraught with confusion, anger and hope as America began its attempt to put away the sentiments of prejudice and bigotry which ignorance had fostered. Deborah Johnson employs Revere, Mississippi as the setting for one town's struggle with the concept of equality between the races. Much of the struggle takes place below the surface as the individuals begin to recognize the ghosts of the past are of importance to their furture. Ms. Johnson portrays a town of people each of whom is caught in his own struggle while trying to create a school system providing equal education - but at the price of the separateness that they want preserved as their protection against their own fears of the future. These people have grown intricately woven relationships which are physically and emotionally so intertwined that merely "the air between" them keeps them separate.

Preeta Samarasan weaves language, time and characters in such a way as to carry the reader into a different culture and history. She creates an even web, teaching and enchanting even as each event and person come to life, showing that what one sees at a given moment in time is really a layered reality that can never be known without all the normally imperceptible small daily realities. Malaysia, its turbulent history and peoples, comes alive in minuscule happenings as they unfold in Samarasan’s impeccable arrangement of time and people. Her people live and breathe, carrying us into their tumultuous yet somnolent life in a spellbinding story that one hates to finish.