Wednesday 4 March 2015

#bookreview: Passing Through Perfect by Bette Lee Crosby

Passing Through PerfectPassing Through Perfect by Bette Lee Crosby
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Benjamin Church returned to Grinder's Corner, Alabama after the war, he dreamed of becoming a mechanic. But days turned into months, and months turned into years, and Benjamin finds himself stuck working on his father's farm to support his young family. The tragic death of his wife changes his life forever and Benjamin must find a way to get his only son, Isaac, out of the South with its deep-rooted racial prejudices to a place where he can build a future in spite of the colour of his skin.

I picked up this book free for review via ebooksforreview.com mainly because I have been on Bette Lee Crosby's mailing list for a while and I wanted to find out what she really writes about (can't remember when/how I got on the list anymore).

It seems that I have been reading an amount of historical fiction relating to the race relationships in America lately, starting with Touched with Fire and Fire and Dust. While those two are written about events in the middle of the war itself, Passing Through Perfect is an excellent "follow up" story of events that take place almost a hundred years after the abolishment of slavery in America. I think it says something about humans that, even though the law has been changed decades prior, the attitudes and traditions of the communities and the prejudices they hold had hardly changed at all.

Passing Through Perfect presents a little slice of life of that time and age, demonstrating how one man's prejudice can destroy a life and how another's open-mindedness and generosity can help rebuild it.

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