Whistling Past the Graveyard

Starla Claudelle wants nothing more than to be reunited with her mother.  Her father is working on an oil rig far away and Starla lives with her grandmother, Mamie, while he is away. Her mother left their family when Starla was little - in fact she has just a few memories of her mom.  

So, when Starla gets in trouble (a frequent occurrence)  and threatened with reform school, she takes off. As you can imagine, things don't go as planned. Nashville is a long ways off from Cayuga Springs and when Starla is offered a ride by Eula a colored woman who is headed to her home with an infant she picked up off the front steps of a colored church, she happily accepts.  And this is where things fall apart.  Eula's own home life isn't so happy, and soon Eula, Starla and the baby are on the road searching for Starla's mom.

Set in 1963, Crandall captures what life in the South was like for blacks and whites.   

Oh, what a crazy story!  Crandall's characters are true originals and the further I read, the more I wanted to keep reading.  I hoped that Starla would find happiness, skeptical that her mother would be able to live up to her expectations.  I hoped that Starla's father would be the father I thought he could be.  I hoped that Eula would have a happy ending to her struggle-filled life.  Crandall's novel had me reading until well past my bedtime, eager to finish this story.

Whatever I say about this book is not enough to do it justice.  It was an absolute pleasure to read Whistling Past the Graveyard. Book clubs and women's fiction readers will fall in love with this book.