Don't let the title fool you - this book is not about religion. It is a very moving book about growing up in the 60's.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High Schoolâ"Told from three points of view, this thought-provoking story takes place in Alabama and Tennessee during the early 1960s. Tab is a junior high school girl whose primary concerns are nail color and being tolerated by the high school crowd at the local soda shop. Her childhood friend, Maudie, is a black polio victim who wears a leg brace and recently survived a fire at the Tuskegee Polio Institute. Tab's father, Charles, is a hardworking farmer descended from one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. All three lives are dramatically changed by the events of one summer. When Tab and her older sister embark on a secret trip to the Highlander Folk School with their socially conscious aunt, they become unwilling participants in an interracial camp, living with Civil Rights activists. At the same time, Maudie is recruited to help prepare resistant African Americans for voter registration by teaching life skills and reading, and Charles is trying to keep his farm solvent and his family in their accustomed genteel lifestyle while supporting the candidate running against segregationist George Wallace. The stories converge when the main characters experience the tragic consequences of their involvement with integration.
From Publishers Weekly
The dawn of integration challenges the Southern smalltown conventions of Bainbridge, Ala., bringing unexpected epiphanies to a cast of loosely connected characters in Devoto's gracefully written new novel. Third-generation farmer Charles Rutland, father of five, watches the family business spiral into debt; as he considers his options, a gubernatorial candidate with a pro-integration message captures his attention and roils local politics. His free-spirited sister, Eugenia, comes to visit and sneaks his two oldest daughters off to Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training camp for civil disobedience and social advocacy. There, Tab and Tina meet Dominique Calder, the biracial Yankee daughter of a divorced Civil Rights movement leader, who exposes the girls to the realities of social injustice. Devoto (My Last Days as Roy Rogers) also chronicles the parallel story of Tab's friend Maudie May, a polio patient at Tuskegee whose Highlander education galvanizes her to start a voter-registration school. While Maudie works to earn her students' trust, Dominique brings Tab to a lunch counter sit-in in Nashville, an experience that forever changes the formerly complacent teen.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High Schoolâ"Told from three points of view, this thought-provoking story takes place in Alabama and Tennessee during the early 1960s. Tab is a junior high school girl whose primary concerns are nail color and being tolerated by the high school crowd at the local soda shop. Her childhood friend, Maudie, is a black polio victim who wears a leg brace and recently survived a fire at the Tuskegee Polio Institute. Tab's father, Charles, is a hardworking farmer descended from one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. All three lives are dramatically changed by the events of one summer. When Tab and her older sister embark on a secret trip to the Highlander Folk School with their socially conscious aunt, they become unwilling participants in an interracial camp, living with Civil Rights activists. At the same time, Maudie is recruited to help prepare resistant African Americans for voter registration by teaching life skills and reading, and Charles is trying to keep his farm solvent and his family in their accustomed genteel lifestyle while supporting the candidate running against segregationist George Wallace. The stories converge when the main characters experience the tragic consequences of their involvement with integration.
From Publishers Weekly
The dawn of integration challenges the Southern smalltown conventions of Bainbridge, Ala., bringing unexpected epiphanies to a cast of loosely connected characters in Devoto's gracefully written new novel. Third-generation farmer Charles Rutland, father of five, watches the family business spiral into debt; as he considers his options, a gubernatorial candidate with a pro-integration message captures his attention and roils local politics. His free-spirited sister, Eugenia, comes to visit and sneaks his two oldest daughters off to Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training camp for civil disobedience and social advocacy. There, Tab and Tina meet Dominique Calder, the biracial Yankee daughter of a divorced Civil Rights movement leader, who exposes the girls to the realities of social injustice. Devoto (My Last Days as Roy Rogers) also chronicles the parallel story of Tab's friend Maudie May, a polio patient at Tuskegee whose Highlander education galvanizes her to start a voter-registration school. While Maudie works to earn her students' trust, Dominique brings Tab to a lunch counter sit-in in Nashville, an experience that forever changes the formerly complacent teen.
reviewed on MyShelf.com. It is an ARC paperback copy
