Search - We Are All Welcome Here

I read everything Elizabeth Berg writes, and I wouldn't say this is her finest, but the writing has her usual luminous quality and is a pleasure to read. This is written thrugh the eyes of a young teen girl, in the early 1960s, in Tupelo MS, who lives with her beautiful young mother who was crippled by polio when pregnant. The father has deserted, and they are able to live independently, although in poverty, only with round the clock care for the mom, most notably provided by a black woman named Peacie, whose man friend has become active in the civil rights movement. There is a constant threat, not only of civil unrest, but of the state caseworker deciding to institutionalize the mom and put the girl in foster care, for lack of proper caretakers available. The ending is way too 'pat' and easy, but the family and the times they lived in are beautifully rendered.

Not one of Berg's best books, but it's a good read. It moves a bit slow early on, but picks up a lot. I liked that it was based on a reader's story. I thought it was nice of the author to take a reader's story and turn it into a fictional novel.

A quick read, hard to put down story about a girl dealing with her mother's polio.

Fascinating book. The story is fictional, but inspired by a true story. This is the story of Diana Dunn, who's mother is paralyzed from polio.

This is a great story of family, love and perseverance, as well as an indictment of 1960's society norms about the rights of handicapped people.

The end has a twist that is so fanciful it's not believable. And yet at the same time, it's the sort of happy ending you wish for a family like this.

Set against the backdrop of the civil right movement in 1964, comes a story of 3 women who are struggling against overwhelming odds for her own kind of freedom.

very good