Review: Prequel to NECESSARY LIES
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2013
After spending the night playing with an oujia board in a church graveyard,,  thirtren-year-old Ivy Hart arrives home at 4:00AM to hear her fifteen-year-old sister Mary Ella screaming with labor pains. Rather than calling the nurse, their grandmother instructs Ivy to call their social worker, who says Mary Ella has to go to the hospital to get her "appendix out" after giving birth.Diane Chamberlain has created a wonderful, unique voice in Ivy, a poor girl growing up half a century ago. She captures the dialect of a girl from that time, using appropriate slang. My only criticism, and I'm sure others will disagree, is the use of the word "Negro" rather than the more commonly used "N word" in the south among white people. My personal belief is that sanitizing the word to be more socially appropriate in 2013 does a disservice to history by making racial prejudice a little less terrible. I understand using a milder word not to alienate readers, but I'd prefer the more commonly used word (which I abhor), as ugly as that word is, for historical integrity.