By
– June 25, 2012
The author brings us into the 1920s, just after women won the legal right to vote, and while they were still struggling for the social right to do so. Though change is in the air in Belle’s town of Gentry, Louisiana, it isn’t here yet, and women are expected to wear their hair long, ride horses — never drive — and comport themselves like ladies at all times. Belle, however, decides to bob her hair, and though she does start out riding a horse, it’s named after a suffragette. To make matters worse, Belle starts driving a truck — and repairing it herself! — falls in love with a married Jewish man, has an affair with the foreman of her plantation, and faces up to the Klan. When a Jewish friend tells her that the Klan is not her fight, she replies “I’m a white, Protestant woman. The Klan is sworn to protect me. I’m your only hope.”
Over the course of the book, which is a quick and easy read, Belle changes from a young girl tied to her mother-in-law to a mature woman with ideas and values of her own.
Erin Cantor is an interior designer, teacher of reading and math to third-graders, and a returned Peace Corps volunteer.