This Side Of The Sky
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
An aspiring exploration of life in the early twentieth century, this debut novel from award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton follows two women from Mississippi as they travel to Philadelphia and then to battle-ravaged Europe during the height of World War II, all the while seeking out their rightful place in the world.
Since they were young girls, best friends Lilian Mayfield and Myraleen Chadham wanted to leave their rural hometown in the Deep South for a more adventurous life, believing Mississippi was just another form of hell. Finally able to leave at the age of 26, they first head to racially segregated Philadelphia before joining the Women’s Army Corps and traveling to a war-torn England. Throughout their decades-long journey—both together and apart—they uncover truths about life, love, and friendship.
Winner of the 2002 Colorado Book Award.
“Fully satisfying . . . A lovely story, lovingly told.”—The Washington Post
“[A] smashing debut . . . Funny, smart, well-paced.”—The Denver Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is a sprawling, ambitious saga about two women, lifelong friends, who live through World War II and its aftermath, and the men in their lives. That may sound overly familiar, but the novel offers a very important difference: the two women are black, from rural Mississippi; they spend the war as WACs in London and later in Europe and the lover of one of them is a thoroughly decent German prisoner of war sent to work in the fields in the Deep South. Lilian, the woman with the German lover, is very black, and also resolute and hard-working; her best friend from school days, Myraleen, is a light-skinned beauty who can, and often does, pass for white, and who is sharp, sardonic and unforgiving. Debut novelist Singleton has an economical, restrained style that is particularly effective in moments of high drama and wartime action, but which is otherwise a little laid back for the emotional punch her story often delivers and her chapters from the point of view of Kellner, the German POW, lack the conviction of the rest. Still, this is an often warming and poignant story of a seldom-visited side of the war, one that is well worth knowing.
