From the critically acclaimed writer of A Different Sun, a Southern coming-of-age novel that sets three very different young people against the tumultuous years of the American civil rights movement... Tacker Hart left his home in North Carolina as a local high school football hero, but returns in disgrace after being fired from a prestigious architectural assignment in West Africa. Yet the culture and people he grew to admire have left their mark on him. Adrift, he manages his father's grocery store and becomes reacquainted with a girl he barely knew growing up. Kate Monroe's parents have died, leaving her the family home and the right connections in her Southern town. But a trove of disturbing letters sends her searching for the truth behind the comfortable life she's been bequeathed. On the same morning but at different moments, Tacker and Kate encounter a young African-American, Gaines Townson, and their stories converge with his. As Winston-Salem is pulled into the tumultuous 1960s, these three Americans find themselves at the center of the civil rights struggle, coming to terms with the legacies of their pasts as they search for an ennobling future.
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“Cassandra Campbell delivers a stunning narration of this thoughtful novel set in the early 1960s and spanning North Carolina and Nigeria…Campbell’s delivery of Tacker and Kate’s profound conversations is magnificent; both voices are softly Southern but so distinctive that this listener sometimes believed there were two narrators. A young African–American who works for Tacker becomes enmeshed in the Civil Rights movement, and Campbell deftly delivers both his natural voice and the careful tone he uses with white people. Her portrayal of Nigerian characters is gently melodic and respectful. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“A novel of great humanity…Conceived with compassion and rendered with grace, it scores a triumph for its author and a blessing for her readers.”
— Richmond Times-Dispatch“Orr offers beautifully wrought lesson about America’s troubled race relations and what it means to follow one’s conscience.”
— Greensboro News & RecordBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Elaine Neil Orr is the author of Swimming between Worlds, A Different Sun, two scholarly books, and the memoir Gods of Noonday: A White Girl’s African Life. She is a professor of English at North Carolina State University and also serves on the faculty of the brief-residency MFA in writing program at Spalding University. She has been a featured speaker and writer-in-residence at numerous universities and conferences and is a frequent fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was born in Nigeria.
Cassandra Campbell has won multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, and the prestigious Odyssey Award for narration. She was been named a “Best Voice” by AudioFile magazine and in 2018 was inducted in Audible’s inaugural Narrator Hall of Fame.