Rachel has brown skin and blue eyes. At 11-years old, she's taking the bus with her grandmother in Portland the first time she realizes the significance of this. It's different. Heidi Durrow draws on her own experience (raised by a Danish mother and an African-American father) to explore how Rachel comes to grips with her racial identity.
The multi-layered story opens slowly. Pieces come together and we figure out that Rachel was involved in some sort of accident in Chicago before being sent to live with her old-fashioned and grass-rootsy grandmother. A boy named Brick, an aunt named Loretta, and a job at a community center all help shape Rachel's ideas of who she is.
As the story unfolds, I loved that Rachel spoke like a young girl too smart for the world around her. Unknowingly, like every smart girl does. Durrow has already been compared to classics like Harper Lee and Carson McCullers. While I'm not ready to profess that, I will eagerly anticipate her next protagonist and hope she has half the heart that her young Rachel does.
Found an old bookmark with a quote from this book today. What a fantastic read. Still resonates. "Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see edges and lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness or the anger, begins."
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