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Gr 6-Up In this remarkable and powerful book, Hesse invites readers to bear witness to the Ku Klux Klan's activities in a small Vermont town in the 1920s. Using free verse as she did in Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997), the narrative here is expanded to encompass the voices of 11 townspeople, young and old, of various races and creeds. The story is divided into five acts, and would lend itself beautifully to performance. The plot unfolds smoothly, and ...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Karen Hesse's latest free-verse novel employs eleven different voices to record the Ku Klux Klan's effects on a Vermont town in 1924, with dubious success. The fictional cast, comprising two children and nine adults, is introduced with sepia-toned photographs to boost their verisimilitude and help sort out who's who. Yet many still feel more like types than complex individuals. There is the hypocritical preacher, who calls Harlem the "den of the devil" while failing to see anything wrong in his own racist and lecherous behavior. There is the eighteen-year-old Klansman-in-the-making, who ultimately reforms after witnessing a...Log In or Sign Up to Read More