Walking with Miss Millie

Bundy, Tamara. Walking with Miss Millie. 2017. 227p. ISBN 978-0-399-54456-9. Available at FIC BUN on the library shelves.

It is 1968, and Alice and her family are moving to Rainbow, Georgia. Rainbow is a sleepy little town, and Alice, her younger brother Eddie and her mother. Her father has remained behind in Ohio, but they haven’t seen him for six months, ever since Christmas last year. Alice is upset that the family has to move down to her parents’ birthplace so they can help grandmother. After all, grandmother looked fine the last time she came to visit. Rainbow is small, it is hot, and it is in the middle of nowhere.

Straight upon arrival Alice notices that her grandmother is not well. The house smells, the garden is mostly dead, and she is wearing her nightgown outside in the afternoon. Alice’s hope for a reconsideration of their move is dashed. Then her brother Eddie runs in the neighbor’s yard. Eddie is deaf and sometimes does not pay attention to what he does. Alice goes get him, and she meets the next door neighbor, Miss Millie. Older even than her grandmother, Miss Millie seems stern. When the telephone rings, Alice picks up, forgetting that it is a party line. She eavesdrops on a conversation between Miss Millie and a friend. Told to apologize by her mother, she goes over there the next morning and is asked to walk Clarence, Miss Millie’s dog. Unfortunately, Clarence will not walk if Alice holds the leash, so Miss Millie goes with them.

Over the course of the summer, Alice gets to know Ms. Millie and her struggles as a black woman in a white neighborhood in the South. She learns of her family history, of segregation, and of the racism that still pervades the town. In turn she’s able to share with Miss Millie the pain and anxiety that comes from being rejected by her father, who neither calls nor writes.

As their friendship grows, Alice realizes that life in Rainbow might not be as bad as she thought it would be.

Outrun the Moon

Lee, Stacey. Outrun the Moon. 2016. 391p. 607 mins. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Mercy Wong is dedicated to achieving her goal of owning her own enterprise and pulling her family out of poverty. Living with her little brother, her mother, and her father in a small apartment in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1906, Mercy experiences daily discrimination. Her father runs a laundromat and works sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Her younger brother is sick and frequently needs medicines. Her mother is a fortune teller who has predicted her own death. Americans dislike the Chinese and have closed off their borders to more Chinese immigration, so even though Mercy is born in the United States and therefore a citizen, she’s considered an alien by the local population.

Having read and thoroughly internalized a treatise on business, Mercy embarks on a mission to join the most prestigious high school for girls in San Francisco, the St. Clare’s School for Girls, where the scions of San Francisco’s rich families go to perfect their education and social graces before meeting a husband. Mercy, however, plans on developing her business acumen and make contacts. Her friend Tom, whom she is romantically interested in, wants to build air machines and refuses to join his father in his herbalist business, planning instead to move to Seattle to work with a certain individual named Boeing.

Mercy convinces Mister Du Lac, a board member of the school and the owner of the most prestigious chocolate maker in the country to help her join the school. She has to pretend to be a Chinese heiress even though she’s never been to China and doesn’t know many of her culture’s more refined customs. None of that deters Mercy, however, who will persevere through mean girls at the boarding school, a strict and disciplinarian headmistress, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires that destroy most of the city to achieve her goals of not only succeeding in American society but changing it as well. Filled with humor, this book provides a great look at a relatively unknown period of American history.