Review copy provided by my personal library.
From Goodreads: A young girl sets out to save her sick mother and records her
adventures in quilt pieces.
Ludelphia Bennett may be blind in one eye, but she can still put in a good stitch. Ludelphia sews all the time, especially when things go wrong.
But when Mama goes into labor early and gets deathly ill, it seems like even quilting won’t help. That’s when Ludelphia decides to do something drastic—leave Gee’s Bend for the very first time. Mama needs medicine that can only be found miles away in Camden. But that doesn’t stop Ludelphia. She just puts one foot in front of the other. What ensues is a wonderful, riveting and sometimes dangerous adventure. Ludelphia weathers each challenge in a way that would make her mother proud, and ends up saving the day for her entire town.
Wow! I was completely blown away by this story. Once I got started there was no turning back. Latham manages to create an authentic voice for Ludelphia or Lu. This voice really helps readers to connect with the story of Lu and her family, sharecroppers who live in Gee's Bend, Alabama.
When Lu's Mama goes into labor early and does not pull out of it, she decides that she is going to find Doc Nelson and bring him here to help her. Along the way Ludelphia finds an inner strength that helps her to care one when facing challenges most adults would struggle with today.
This is middle-grade fiction at its best. What more can you saw for a book that was much more than I ever could have expected. This book would be perfect to use in a history class while studying the Great Depression and the effects of sharecropping. But this would be the type of book that I would have loved to read in school, because as a reader you can really connect with Ludelphia and you can help but love her. This is a great book to share with kids in middle to even high school and I would also recommend it to adults as well, especially if you enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird (while reading, I couldn't help but feel a similarity too).
All and all an excellent debut novel and one of my favorites of this year.
1 comments:
Hi Jess - I am thrilled you enjoyed Ludelphia's story as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thank you for this lovely review. If you'll send me your address to irene at irenelatham dot com, I'll send you a little something special. :)
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