This Side Of The Sky - Softcover

Elyse Singleton is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the United States in such publications as USA Today, Miami Herald, and Chicago Tribune, and in Canada, New Zealand, and Europe.

This lengthy debut novel by an award-winning journalist tells the life story of two independent-minded black women, Lilian and Myraleen, who were born in the early 20th century in Mississippi, where "being poor in Nadir didn't mean being starved to death; it meant being worried to death." The two become close friends and eventually move away from the restricting Southern environment to Philadelphia, where they discover the veiled segregation of the North. They work at menial jobs, refuse offers of marriage, and enlist in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Events such as the bombings of London and life in postwar Paris are presented from their unique perspective. Myraleen eventually becomes romantically involved with a black pilot, while, in an odd set of circumstances, Lilian pursues a German POW she befriended in Nadir. Although this book presents an informed glimpse of segregation before and during the war, the characters are never completely developed, and many events feel too contrived. All the facts are here but not enough of the feelings. An optional purchase. [This book is dedicated to librarians, specifically those at the Denver P.L.-Ed.]-David A. Berona, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durha.
--David A. Berona, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
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