Diane Chamberlain is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and this book is the second one I read by her this year that has made it into my top list for 2021. What I like about her books is that she successfully fictionalizes serious events in recent history in a way that does not come across as opportunistic but rather as respectful to the memories of the real people affected.
In 1965, white teenager Ellie Hockley is living in Round Hill, North Carolina and joining the Civil Rights Movement, risking everything to help Black people in her community register to vote. Alternating with chapters set in 2010, architects Kayla Carter and her husband are building their dream house in a new subdivision at the end of Hockley Street but after her husband’s accidental death, someone will stop at nothing to keep Kayla from moving in and to keep Round Hill’s racist secrets buried.
I really enjoy books that alternate between two time periods, and I especially liked this one because it wasn’t a big twist that the main person in the earlier timeline is also one of our main characters in the present (Ellie Hockley,) so the author was able to slowly build the suspense about the big twist without the reader being worried that she was killed by the increasing violence against her in 1965.
Knowing what this book was about, though, I was a bit worried how a book about a white girl living in the South during the Civil Rights Movement might be received in the present day. And I’m not absolutely sure that this book is entirely without white savior problems, but I thought that the racial issues were handled honestly for how a naïve teenager in North Carolina in the Sixties might have handled them. I also thought that it was smart of the author to set the modern day in 2010, ahead of the current focus of news headlines (not that there weren’t the same racial issues in 2010 that there were in 2020,) but her way of handling it allowed the reader to come to their own conclusion about how little has actually changed.
And, what seems to be a running theme in Diane Chamberlain books, make sure you have tissues nearby for at least part of this story.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press at NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.