What Are You Reading

I just finished Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr.  It was a definite couldn’t put it down kind of book.  Growing up in Arkansas I lived in the times in which this book is set—racial unrest, Vietnam war just over, and mixed race marriages were taboo. 

The story is about a little girl of a broken home--American father, Japanese mother parentage who lives with her grandparents in a small close knit northern town.  A nurse and her husband, a teacher, both African American come to the town causing the little girl to question her grandfather’s racially prejudiced beliefs.  The child herself is racially tormented but her grandfather refuses to see this ugly aspect of the town he refused to leave even when offered a chance to play professional baseball.

Were people that cruel, adults tormenting an eight year old child and allowing their own children to torment that child??  Turning a blind eye.  I couldn’t put the book down and it left me in tears.