num_pages: 228
description: Alice Walker, poet and lyrical novelist, follows her acclaimed novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, with a moving, affirmative novel of the seventies.Set mostly in the deep South and New York, it is the story of one woman’s pilgrimage to free herself from the guilt of the past and the development of her commitment to the poor and the black.Meridian Hill grew up in modest circumstances in the Southern world of racism, poverty, and social neglect. It left her, at seventeen, a deserted teen-age mother very nearly as innocent as her baby, with a vision totally circumscribed by the limits of her own meager experience. Meridian’s future seemed over even before it had properly begun. Then one day, impelled by curiosity to find out what sort of people they were, Meridian volunteered to help in the local civil-rights movement. It was to change her life.The power of this remarkable novel lies in the author’s vision that saintliness, though not necessarily manifested in a religious context, still exists in the world today. But perhaps what makes this novel most notable is the tenderness and psychological precision with which the author depicts her characters.Meridian is Alice Walker’s sixth book, and will further enhance her already distinguished literary reputation.
language: English
title: Meridian
titlecomplete: Meridian
genres: Fiction, African American, 20th Century, Classics, School, Race, Historical Fiction, Feminism, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 6050
publisher: Harcourt