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The Road from Money: A Journey to Find Why?
The Road from Money takes you on a journey to the small town of Money, Mississippi; just after the turn of the 20th century. It is the story of Estella Reynolds, a young Negro girl, growing up in America's deep South. You follow her life as she faces racism, segregation, exploration, brutality and poverty. You watch as she finds the joy of family life, battles to get a good education, finds her first love and above all tries to figure out why things are the way they are. You enter a time after World War I and before the start of World War II. A time when automobiles were new and planes had just taken to the sky. The story is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the Great Dust Bowl, a flood, Prohibition; and a time when Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt were President. The story also highlights the strengths of a people and many of America's weaknesses.
208 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2014
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 4, 2018
I really like this story. I feel like it was based on someone's real life, because so many true-to-life things happen in the book about Estella and her family. She is a young black woman heading out on her own by moving north from Mississippi to Chicago to stay with her uncle. It's a fascinating read with her seeing the city for the first time, with people treating her differently than they did down south. Even with it being during the time of the depression, her and her uncle fared well with work and trading handyman skills and cleaning in exchange for a place to live. It's the classic bartering system. It's also a new world for Estella with streetcars and fancy stores and the things called escalators, which she had never seen.
I enjoyed reading this book, and it gets even better as Estella's mother and sister moves north with her. I like the people in the story, and they are fun and interesting characters. Life and war changes things in the family, and all of that is a real part of the story. As the ladies go to work in factories making planes for the war effort, the time is really showcased and as Estella gets to know people of different races, it's eye-opening. It's a very good story and so much happens, and I look forward to hearing more about the family in the future. The Road from Money is highly recommended.
I enjoyed reading this book, and it gets even better as Estella's mother and sister moves north with her. I like the people in the story, and they are fun and interesting characters. Life and war changes things in the family, and all of that is a real part of the story. As the ladies go to work in factories making planes for the war effort, the time is really showcased and as Estella gets to know people of different races, it's eye-opening. It's a very good story and so much happens, and I look forward to hearing more about the family in the future. The Road from Money is highly recommended.
June 22, 2014
A type of quiet segregation still exists.
Four stars
The conditions in the South after the Civil War, causing much more suffering because of northern carpet baggers, as so aptly portrayed in “Gone With the Wind,” created havoc on both southern Whites and Blacks, but the Blacks took the biggest brunt of it as time passed, as is so forthrightly displayed in the above historical novel. The events and experiences are based on those of a real Black woman, Estelle, in Money, Mississippi, who at age eight realized the unfairness of the quality of life for a Black when compared to a White person. The most influential person in her life, her grandfather, Paul Reynolds, couldn’t relieve this unfairness, but he could teach her how to live with it.
She had a great mind and through desire, continual seeking, she finally was able to get a better education than she could possibly get in Money. And in the deep South, conditions didn’t improve for the Blacks until the day of Martin Luther King, and even thereafter in 1987 when I chanced to travel through the deep south, I discovered there was still a segregation quietly existing.
This story probably fits in the YA gender most aptly and the author intends to follow up with two more books in this three part trilogy. There are several good books written about these times and travails, but this is a good one with which to acquaint self. The character descriptions are good, the language idiom of the Blacks and the events are colorfully and truthfully set out. I recommend book about a segment of American history.
I was given this book as a complimentary copy for an honest review.
Four stars
The conditions in the South after the Civil War, causing much more suffering because of northern carpet baggers, as so aptly portrayed in “Gone With the Wind,” created havoc on both southern Whites and Blacks, but the Blacks took the biggest brunt of it as time passed, as is so forthrightly displayed in the above historical novel. The events and experiences are based on those of a real Black woman, Estelle, in Money, Mississippi, who at age eight realized the unfairness of the quality of life for a Black when compared to a White person. The most influential person in her life, her grandfather, Paul Reynolds, couldn’t relieve this unfairness, but he could teach her how to live with it.
She had a great mind and through desire, continual seeking, she finally was able to get a better education than she could possibly get in Money. And in the deep South, conditions didn’t improve for the Blacks until the day of Martin Luther King, and even thereafter in 1987 when I chanced to travel through the deep south, I discovered there was still a segregation quietly existing.
This story probably fits in the YA gender most aptly and the author intends to follow up with two more books in this three part trilogy. There are several good books written about these times and travails, but this is a good one with which to acquaint self. The character descriptions are good, the language idiom of the Blacks and the events are colorfully and truthfully set out. I recommend book about a segment of American history.
I was given this book as a complimentary copy for an honest review.
June 21, 2014
The Road from Money tells the story of my Aunt Estella, born in 1917, in Money, Mississippi. The novel covers her first 20 years, living in the deep South during the harsh times of Jim Crow laws and tells the story of her family and her journey to find why? Read more about the book at http://www.boydbooks.net
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews