Zora and Me
By Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon
2010

This Edgar Award Nominee for best juvenile mystery takes place during the turn-of-the-century in Eatonville, a small all-black community in Florida. Zora, based on the author Zora Neal Hurston, and her best friend Carrie encounter horrible, scary, and mysterious events/clues that they try to put together by themselves. In the end, the true answer is scarier than the fantastical ideas they originally came up with.
I enjoyed, immensely, this story, though readers should be prepared for graphic racist language and situations.
4 stars. ( )

Yet another Young Adult book dealing with a powerful subject. This is a fictionalized story based on the real life author Zora Neale Hurston, and her friend Carrie. Told from the perspective of Carrie, we see two highly intelligent girls trying to make sense of a murder. As they put the pieces together of the tragic killing of a black man who was beheaded by the railroad tracts, they learn that life is not as idyllic as they perceived.

Carrie loves Zora, and also notes that her friend loves to tell stories, and embellishment is simply part of her make up. In real life, Zora is the author of the book Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Living in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black township in the United States, sets the tone of a community where everyone knows one another.

Thus, when a stranger appears, Zora and Carrie are very fascinated with him. Soon thereafter, he is found dead by the railroad tracks.

The young girls all-too soon learn that race relations, particularly in the south, are fraught with spoken, and nebulous rules wherein there is a very high price to pay if a black man breaks social norms when mingling with a white woman.

I very much liked the way in which the author slowly built to the conclusion and, through excellent writing, told the dramatic ending in a way in which the reader was not bombarded, but rather came to learn the ugly workings of racism.

Highly recommended.

RGG: Channels the style and tone of Zora Neale Hurston herself, but makes for a very difficult middle-grade read. Reading Interest: 12

Another audio-read courtesy of World Book Night and audiobooks.com. My only familiarity with Zora Neale Hurston prior to this was via Their Eyes Were Watching God. However, I am a lover of Southern literature, Southern writers, tall tales, and the art of story telling. This book was a wonderful interlude on a recent car journey, which brought the town of Eatonville, Florida, and the inhabitants there, clearly alive in my mind. ( )

Warning to parents of preteens: The book's ending does get into some of the issues around race, segregation and the taboo against Black men talking to White women. After reading it, my 10-year-old daughter asked if I had read it and said that there were some parts that made no sense to her. I finally picked it up and read it last night and now understand why the denouement would be confusing to most 21st century tweens. ( )