The Summer We Got Saved
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"The dawn of integration challenges the Southern smalltown conventions of Bainbridge, Ala. . . . in Devoto's gracefully written new novel." —Publishers Weekly
My Last Days as Roy Rogers, Pat Cunningham Devoto's notable debut, received widespread praise in the Denver Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Kirkus Reviews, among other publications. Born and raised in North Alabama, Devoto taps into her personal experiences and memories of growing up in the changing South to infuse The Summer We Got Saved with astonishing honesty and poignancy.
"Alabama in the 1960s was still in denial about the civil rights movement. Tab Rutland proudly proclaimed that Cousin John Lester was one of the founding members of the Klu Klux Klan. Her sister, Tina, was too interested in makeup and boys to bother with history or politics. And their father would back the same tired candidate for governor because that's what his kinfolk always did—until Aunt Eugenia visits from California . . . This is a wonderfully poignant, funny, and intelligent book about coming-of-age and wisdom. The narrative never becomes preachy, and all the characters are realistically flawed and completely delightful." —Booklist (starred review)
"Affecting . . . a remarkable read . . . her characters ring true as their worlds collide and their lives intersect, leaving them all change forever." —Lalita Tademy, New York Times bestselling author
"Nicely woven: Devoto captures the internal ambivalence of a society teetering on the uneasy verge of change." —Kirkus Reviews
"Superb . . . the work of a gifted storyteller." —Robert Inman, author of Dairy Queen Days
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The dawn of integration challenges the Southern smalltown conventions of Bainbridge, Ala., bringing unexpected epiphanies to a cast of loosely connected characters in Devoto's gracefully written new novel. Third-generation farmer Charles Rutland, father of five, watches the family business spiral into debt; as he considers his options, a gubernatorial candidate with a pro-integration message captures his attention and roils local politics. His free-spirited sister, Eugenia, comes to visit and sneaks his two oldest daughters off to Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training camp for civil disobedience and social advocacy. There, Tab and Tina meet Dominique Calder, the biracial Yankee daughter of a divorced Civil Rights movement leader, who exposes the girls to the realities of social injustice. Devoto (My Last Days as Roy Rogers) also chronicles the parallel story of Tab's friend Maudie May, a polio patient at Tuskegee whose Highlander education galvanizes her to start a voter-registration school. While Maudie works to earn her students' trust, Dominique brings Tab to a lunch counter sit-in in Nashville, an experience that forever changes the formerly complacent teen. Devoto's episodic, nonchronological structure creates potent narrative pull, but her evenhanded, affectionate treatment of her complex characters, each struggling to make sense of their changing world, is the novel's greatest asset.
