Julia Scheeres

"At 35, Elsie Robinson feared she'd lost it all. She was reeling from a hostile divorce to a wealthy man that played out in tabloids across the country and she faced an uncertain future as the single mother of a chronically-ill son. She had no clear means of financial support, no college education or training. She'd hit a wall. At a time when it was thought that a woman's highest calling was to become a wife and mother, Elsie hungered for a different...

"Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen-years-old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother--more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children--and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a...