Whatever you do, don't read the back of this book while operating heavy machinery. You might fall asleep and hurt yourself. But there is a god, and this book is fabulous from the word go. As I said, I think the back of this book does a terrible disservice to the reader. It sounds awful. A better short synopsis would be: a guy marries a woman and moves her out to a farm to live with his family and all hell breaks loose. I am not usually one for books that seem to be about average people living their lives. I mean, give me a break. I am a sci-fi writer for crying out loud. I tend to keep waiting for the robots to show up, but this book was different. It was extraordinary in its simplicity. It reminded me that the world doesn't have to actually end for the characters to feel like it is and act accordingly. Each chapter is told through the eyes of a different character. I know a lot of books are doing this right now, but none have been more successful than Hillary Jordan. She does a fantastic job of making you feel one way about a character because of who is narrating at the moment, then you look at it through another character's eyes and you see things completely different. Isn't that how real life is?

This is one of my all time favorite books so I hope you enjoy it. As always, if you read it, I would love to know what you think.

In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not—charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion.