Reviews: "Murmurous, intimate, moving and wise. A story of interracial friendship, of love and of courage, all told with a hearthside, yearn-spinning rhythm." -- Kirkus Reviews "Totally believable, as though we were reading oral history. Cass and Allie are women of stature, and their creation is a true literary accomplishment." -- The Chicago Tribune "Rich with personality and the cadence of Texas. Moving and beautifully written." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer "Von Herzen manages what few novels about interracial friendships can claim; it telescopes the personal drama without losing sight of the larger social consequences. -- The Village Voice "A fresh, poetically evocative and down-to-earth novel." -- The Washington Post "Emotionally resonant and keenly sensual, this complex and unusual first novel trembles with the forces of conflict and reconciliation, love and memory." -- Booklist

Excerpts: Down Marston's hill and through the valley beyond, the wetness collected in the grass in glassy, glittered drops that caught the light of the sky and threw it back like the eyes of wild things. The trees stood up at the roadside with their green yearnings revealed, their stiff fingers chafing under a small wind. On the oleander trees, the blossoms hung in crumpled, pink rags, scattered over the curtains of leaves like a last-minute thought. Everything held a strangeness inside it that made it somehow new -- even my house, with its black-eyed windows and propped-out door, waiting for its homecomings with a wonder that looked like mine.