Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

390 pages

Ratings Explanation

Language: Nigger, Between The Legs, Commie Jews, the Lord’s name in vain, peckerwoods.

Violence:  Winburn L. Forest, Win, hits his wife.  He also burns Florence, his daughter, with a cigarette lighter to teach her a lesson.  Win, the KKK local leader, brutally rapes Eva Greene and then burns her face with his car lighter.  Win dislocates his daughter’s arm when he thinks she is sassing him.  He stabs and kills Eva Greene with a screwdriver.

Sexual Content:  Zenie tells Ray, “You and your pleasure just going to have to hold up.”  Florence’s father inappropriately snuggles and rubs her stomach at  night as she goes to sleep.  Florence is inappropriately touched by klansmen as she is passed around at a meeting in her underwear, covered only with her new klansman cape.

Adult Themes:  Florence’s mother is an alcoholic trying to escape her marriage.  Mama runs the car accidentally on purpose into a train.  Win, Florence’s father, sends her to Whitfield, a mental institution.  Florence’s Grandpa, the protector, dies.  Mama is released from the mental institution to attend her father’s funeral.  She is petrified of being locked away in Whitfield by her husband.  She runs, but leaves Florence behind to fend for herself.

Summary

In the turbulent southern summer of 1963, Millwood’s white population steers clear of “Shake Rag,” the black section of town. Young Florence Forrest is one of the few who crosses the line. The daughter of a burial insurance salesman with dark secrets (local Klu Klux Klan leader) and the town’s “cake lady”, whose back country bootleg runs lead her further and further away from a brutal marriage.  Florence attaches herself to her grandparents’ longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. Named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, Zenie treats the unwanted girl as just another chore, while telling her stories of the legendary queen’s courage and cunning.  The more time Florence spends in Shake Rag, the more she recognizes how completely race divides her town, and her story, far from ordinary, bears witness to the truth and brutality of her times–a truth brought to a shattering conclusion when Zenie’s vibrant college-student niece, Eva Green, arrives that fateful Mississippi summer.  Eva is brutally raped and later murdered by Florence’s father.  Florence finally escapes from her father’s tyranny.

I love to read historical fiction!  I really enjoyed Gwin’s writing style.  There was a pervasive sense of foreboding throughout; “You just knew something terribly wrong was going to happen.”

©2011 The Literate Mother