Ten-year-old Ludelphia Bennett had never set her bare feet on any dirt outside the small sharecropping community of Gee's Bend, Alabama. There was never a need for it. While her daddy and brother were in the fields pulling cotton, Ludelphia helped her mama around the house. When there wasn't work to be done she pulled the small scraps of cloth and needle from her pocket to work on her story quilt. Stitching the tiny pieces together settled her thoughts and comforted her.

As time passed, Mama needed her help more often. It seemed that the bigger the baby grew inside Mama, the weaker she became. One morning, a series of coughing fits seized Mama and caused her to collapse on the floor. She couldn't get back up. It was all Ludelphia could do to get Mama across the room and onto the cornshuck pallet she used for a bed. It was too soon for the baby to be born but it couldn't be helped. Without a doctor or time to spare, Ludelphia and her neighbor, Etta Mae, did everything they knew how to do.

When her mama's health takes a turn for the worse and her family says there's nothing else they can do, Ludelphia takes matters into her own hands. She decides that her mama's only hope is for her to leave Gee's Bend in search of a real doctor with real medicine. The perilous journey to Camden is over 40 miles long and danger lurks at every turn. Ludelphia's greatest strength is her ability to draw on the words of wisdom her mother instilled in her over the years. Will this inner strength be enough to carry Ludelphia to Camden and back in time to save her mother's life?

Leaving Gee's Bend is set in 1932 in the dirt-poor sharecropping community of Gee's Bend, Alabama. The language used is authentic to the period and people. The characters and landscape are vivid. The author moves smoothly between Ludelphia's inner thoughts and the world around her. Although the protagonist is only ten, Leaving Gee's Bend will appeal to more than a middle-grade audience and is reminiscent of Wilder's Little House series.

Latham has successfully woven together a novel that reflects the deep faith and inner strength of the people of Gee's Bend and offers a glimpse into the area's rich quilting history.

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A great main character unfortunately doesn't make up for the contrived plot in this lukewarm debut novel that attempts to be a moving journey of familial resilience in the face of racism and other elements.

At the beginning, I thought this book was almost magical. Ludelphia is a fantastic narrator, her voice so genuine, earnest, and warm. She's ten years old but will be loved by readers of all ages, a classic protagonist going on a seemingly straightforward journey for someone else and discovering something about herself in the process.

Unfortunately, the plot felt slow and forced all the way through. The moment Lu leaves Gee's Bend, I had trouble that the world was ours, that this is historical fiction. The world outside Gee's Bend was disconcertingly black-and-white: things and people were either blessed angels helping Lu, or else they were sinister, malicious, inhumane beings. Lu's greatest human antagonist comes in the form of Mrs. Cobb, whose late husband is Lu's family's employer of sorts. It's hard to get a read on Mrs. Cobb. One minute she's almost saccharinely kind--the next, she's one step away from joining the KKK.

I understand that, to a young girl like Ludelphia, the unknown world might seem like it consists of simple binaries, but I was really hoping for more, events and people that we can actually claim as our own history, ugly as it may be. The story plods along until we can't see Lu's natural charms for the eyeroll-inducing melodrama.

LEAVING GEE'S BEND has a great protagonist but is sadly lacking in plot strength. It's no standout addition to African American historical fiction, but perhaps there may be young readers who are interested in the concept enough to lose themselves in Ludelphia's mesmerizing narration and not notice the story's flaws.

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