Illustration By Lori McElrath-Eslick
Pub Date: Spring 2009
Price: $15.95
Jacketed Hard Cover
ISBN: 978-1-934813-02-7
Page Count: 188
Ages 12+
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BETWEEN US BAXTERS
by Bethany Hegedus
It’s hard to be a "Black Sheep Baxter," at least for 12-year-old Polly. From a poor white family, Polly’s best friend, Timbre Ann Biggs, is black, making them the only "salt-and-pepper" friends in town. Her mom keeps secrets, her dad turns to the "devil’s drink," and her rich, mean Meemaw makes Sunday dinners a chore. But in that fall of 1959, life in quiet Holcolm County starts to heat up. One by one, thriving colored businesses burn to the ground. When someone throws a note wrapped around a brick through the window of Biggs Repair, Polly worries that Timbre Ann will be blinded by the color of her skin and forget they were ever as close as Polly’s mom and Timbre Ann’s Aunt Henri have always been. When a tragic fire brings everything to a head, the spotlight falls on Polly’s family. Sensitively painting a vivid portrait of the Jim Crow South, Polly’s inspiring story captures the defiant spirit of youth in an oppressive small town, just as the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement begin to sprout.
Read What Writers Are Saying About Between Us Baxters:
"In Between Us Baxters, Bethany Hegedus has created that most difficult and wonderful thing in literature: a real family -- complex people who are loving, quarrelsome, generous, impatient, foolish, wise -- and ultimately courageous. The reader will not only recognize each of the Baxters, but come to root for and even love them."
—Norma Fox Mazer, Newbery honor award winner, and author of Ten Ways to Make My Sister Disappear and The Missing Girl
"Between Us Baxters is an important page-turner. I found myself wondering how a novel with so much heart could be so heart-stoppingly suspenseful!”
—Tim Wynne-Jones, author of A Thief in the House of Memory
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