Tag Archives: Racism

Lakewood, by Megan Giddings

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“You give yourself to make your country a better place. You give yourself to keep us safe.”

After her grandmother passes, Lena searches for financial comfort since her mother is medically unwell. She receives a letter offering more than enough to provide the comfort she needs if she moves to Lakewood and submits herself to the Lakewood Project. Accepting, Lena finds herself as part of a human experiment group.

“Why do you think they’re doing these experiments? What do you think they’re trying to learn?”

I enjoyed this debut young adult novel. It was a quick and easy read with a dark atmosphere. Lena’s race and socioeconomic status were rightfully featured as doormat for the government’s testing purposes. I kept wondering what was going to happen to Lena and the others that were part of the experiment group. There are a lot of unanswered questions for the greater half of the novel that build the readers suspense.

But at times it felt repetitive, and I just wanted the story to get on with it and progress. For example, the experiment group would do something they were told and the observers would watch what happened; this seemed to cycle around regularly for several chapters. The ending felt rushed for me. I didn’t feel complete closure for the full character of Lena. It skipped over a lot of the emotional and intellectual depth that was disclosed at the beginning.

Various though-provoking topics and questions surfaced throughout the story as a result of Lena’s background. What boundaries do humans have, and how do we set those boundaries? What are we willing to do to ensure the survival of our family and health insurance for ourselves and/or our loved ones? How do we justify the monetary value placed on someone else’s life?

Lakewood is Megan Giddings debut novel. Visit her website.

Read Boston Globe’s book review for Lakewood.

Read LA Times book review for Lakewood.

Follow Megan Giddings on Twitter.

Learn more about government experimentation by reading about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Operation Sea-Spray, Project Artichoke, or the San Quentin prison experiments.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy. Opinions are my own.

|Purchase on Amazon| Goodreads Review|

Nothing More Dangerous, by Allen Eskens

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“Boady, the men who beat and murdered those people for all those years, do you think they simply disappeared because someone passed a law?”

A colored, divorced woman, Lida Poe, goes missing in the small town of Jessup, Missouri in the 70’s. The town is painted in racism and composed of prejudice beliefs. Growing up in Jessup, teenage Boady Sanden considers himself an average young man and doesn’t realize the segregation and discrimination until he befriends his new neighbors and sees the reaction from certain town members. Boady begins to recognize his own racial thoughts while he and his new friend, Thomas, get pulled into the middle of the Lida Poe murder case. Was there more to her murder case than what was being disclosed?

“You’ll never change what a person thinks in their head or what they feel in their heart by passing a law. If a man doesn’t want to look at who he is deep down, he’s not going to much care what the law says about it.”

I really loved the setting of the novel and watching Boady purge the racial stigmas that he had grown up hearing and believing. The friendship he creates with Thomas, his neighbor, was my favorite part of the novel. While the book obviously centers on overcoming prejudices in the 1970’s, the target for the reader is identifying and conquering our own prejudices, even including predispositions, whatever those might be.

The focus of the story isn’t the murder of Lida Poe, but her murder is used in the growth of the plot and character development. The story centers around Boady and his surroundings; like his peers in school who are blinded by racism and let those feelings drive their actions.

**There is a lot of racial slander in this novel. Violence and hate crimes occur.**

Pictured below is the face of young Emmett Till who is mentioned in the book a few times during the dialogue. Beaten, drowned, and then burned alive, read about the murder of Emmett Till here.

Allen Eskens is the author of award-winning book The Life We Bury.

He is a best-selling author. Nothing More Dangerous is his sixth book. To view all of his books, and the order to read them in, click here.

Follow Allen Eskens on Facebook.

| Purchase on Amazon| Goodreads Review|

Three-Fifths, by John Vercher

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**THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK WITH AN IMPORTANT TITLE.**

John Vercher revolutionizes urban fiction with crime, contemporary issues, mystery, and thriller in his debut novel, Three-Fifths, and the outcome blew me away. During various points, I sat at the edge of my seat with bones shaking, eyes tearing, and my heart racing. Although it directly faces controversial topics such as racism and class differences head on, it surpasses those topics and brought me to tears simply as a parent, sister, friend, and human being. It is wrapped in a realism that occurs nearly every day.

The novel starts off with Bobby, an asthmatic young adult, walking back from work when he runs into his lifelong best friend, Aaron, who has just been released from prison. Riding home together, he quickly learns that Aaron views have changed and, terrified, continues driving him to the food mart where he witnesses Aaron’s criminal acts verifying his new allegiance to the Brotherhood. Bobby struggles with his own identity throughout the novel, hiding under his white features and the secret that he is really mixed. No one knows that his father, who was never around his entire life, is black. He feels like he cannot even rely on his own mother most of the time, and now feels his best friend has betrayed him. Now caught at a cross-roads drowning in accountability, Bobby’s racial divide antagonizes his relationships.

The reader also sees Bobby’s mother, Isabel, who is a single white mom struggling to make ends meet. She wants a better life for her son, but her job as a waitress and her own self-coping mechanism, being alcohol, sometimes create a barrier. “But halfway through the month, she and Bobby were still short on rent, and their need for shelter took priority over pride.” Her son, Bobby, is all she has and is willing to do whatever it takes to pave a way for him. But can she defeat her own monsters? She often wonders if she has made the right decisions and questions her judgment as a parent.

Robert, the doctor who receives the patient that Aaron assaulted the night he was with Bobby, also plays a major role in the story. With his co-workers and family members, we see a successful man who wrestles to accept his own identity. “…there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t look in the mirror that I don’t see a black man before I see a doctor. Because I have to.” Robert’s prose contends to express the racial barrier in society that sometimes goes unnoticed. 

Both a humbling and intense read, I cannot recommend this book enough. Read the whole thing and don’t stop. Be prepared to be all in your emotions. Have tissues and be ready to have a book hangover. This story resonated with me on a personal level in more ways than one and is a story will stay with me for a long time. Please note, however, that there is an abundance of vulgar language and violence in this novel, so it might not be for everyone.

Thank you again and again to John Vercher for creating this important and inspirational story. An amazing debut novel that I highly recommend to others. Thank you to Netgalley and Agora books for allowing me the opportunity to read this piece of fiction. I will be following this author and eagerly waiting for his next book.

| Purchase on Amazon | Goodreads Review |