The Legend of Buddy Bush
Grade 6-9-In rural Rich Square, NC, the 1947 arrest, trial, escape, and eventual acquittal of African-American Buddy Bush rocked a community and sparked international interest. This fictionalized account is narrated by Pattie Mae, Buddy's 12-year-old niece, a perceptive "ease dropper" who discovers the depths of prejudice and the strength of family. The child adores Uncle Buddy, who has unexpectedly returned home from Harlem. Waiting one evening with his niece for his girlfriend to get off work, Buddy has a brief sidewalk encounter with a white woman who later accuses him of attempted rape. Although Pattie Mae witnesses the whole incident and knows that he is innocent, the efforts of her grandparents and single mother to bail him out of jail are futile. When seven armed Ku Klux Klansmen unlock his cell, planning to exercise their own brand of justice, Buddy escapes into the swamp where the white men fear to follow and heads north into legend. Pattie Mae's coming-of-age story re-creates the racial segregation and tension of a small Southern community, demonstrates the loyalty of family, and exposes the heartbreak of injustice. The child's voice is candid, reflective, humorous, dialectic, and full of colloquialisms and superstitions. Her family and neighbors are well-drawn, idiosyncratic characters bound together by their distrust of the white community. Readers will discover universal truths about fairness, dignity, and compassion, and gain an understanding of the older generation as Pattie Mae realizes that home is where the heart is.--Gerry Larson, Durham School of the Arts, NCCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.