Bone by Bone by Bone Author:Tony Johnston From Booklist — In a small town in 1950s Tennessee, nine-year-old David, who is white, and Malcolm, who is black, are blood brothers. Although David's racist father has forbidden their friendship, the boys enjoy wild, free-spirited adventures, exploring caves and acting out their favorite stories (Br'er Rabbit). But as the boys grow older and Dav... more »id's father's threats escalate, David wonders if his dad is a member of the Klan. Is his best friend's life in danger? Like most of her characters, Johnston's novel is layered with disturbing contradictions that add depth and a vivid sense of the time and place. Nostalgic scenes of small-town comforts contrast with the horror in the searing accounts of racism, which are true to David's viewpoint, and Johnston's vocabulary reinforces the effect in bone-chilling shifts from gentle, folksy, poetic colloquialisms to brutal racial slurs, including rampant use of the n-word. The author, who grew up in the South, begins her book with a charged, personal note: "The raw language . . . is my father's language and reflects a way of thinking that has troubled me my whole life." Readers, too, will feel haunted by this powerful story of a child awakening to family secrets and violence, and the racially motivated terrorism enforced by the Jim Crow South.« less