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Black and Secret Midnight |
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 Black and Secret Midnight byLaurel Schunk St Kitts Press 239 pages, 1998 ISBN 0966187903 Reviewed by Nancy Mehl Read our author interview Macbeth, Act lV, Scene 1 – SECOND WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes: Open, lock, Whoever knocks. MACBETH: How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What is’t you do? ALL: A deed without a name. It is July 1951 in Columbus, Georgia and twelve-year-old Beth Anne Crane and her family have come to visit her grandmother. But there is something evil lurking under the Georgia skies and Beth Anne is confused by its presence. Racism and secrets swirl around the young girl as she strains to interpret their meaning. Beth Anne can’t understand why everyone else seems to see people only by the color of their skin since everyone looks like "shades of the same color" to her. Her grandmother’s brother, Uncle Lonnie, tries to explain the difference, but it only adds to her confusion. And Grandma’s sister Ophelia, called Auntie, whom Grandma and Lonnie watch over because she is lost under a blanket of senility, seems to be hiding something deep and dark inside her imprisoned mind – something that Uncle Lonnie and Grandma are committed to keep hidden. When Mama’s cousin Uncle Thane comes to visit with his wild and crude wife Bella, and their daughter Kaylin, things get stranger. Beth Anne isn’t sure who Uncle Thane really is and why his presence seems to stir up the skeletons that Grandma and Uncle Lonnie are so bent on keeping in the closet. But when a young black boy, the son of Auntie’s former cook, is murdered, secrets, lies and fear explode into a story as hot as the Georgia atmosphere. Beth Anne comes of age in the summer of ’51. All the shameful secrets of her family are slowly revealed as the hypocrisy and hatred of bigotry is exposed as the catalyst for murder. Black and Secret Midnight is the tale of a young girl’s spiritual and emotional growth in a confusing world of racism, and one you won’t soon forget. Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, Ms. Schunk displays the intricacies and prejudices of the human condition in a way that lays us all bare. Black and Secret Midnight is a light in the darkness and a novel to sink your teeth and your heart into. |
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