The Dry Grass of August Audiobook

Quotes

• “The Dry Grass of August is a haunting debut about family bonds that stretch without breaking and a panoramic glimpse into an older America and the dying of an age. Young Jubie Watts is the perfect heroine and narrator of this tale with her clear-eyed look at the inconsistencies of the adults around her, and for her courage to ask ‘why?’ Ms. Mayhew creates authentic characters and a Southern setting that will make you feel and smell a summer day from half a century ago. A beautiful book that fans of The Help will enjoy.”

  — Karen White, New York Times bestselling author

• “Written with unusual charm, wonderful dialogue, and a deeply felt sense of time and place, The Dry Grass of August is a book for adults and young people both—a beautifully written literary novel that is a real page-turner, I have to add. Fast, suspenseful, and meaningful. I read this book straight through.”

  — Lee Smith, New York Times bestselling author

• “Jubie is a compelling heroine…This mesmerizing story takes place when segregation is being challenged in the highways and byways of the Deep South…and…the setting emerges as a pivotal character in this important debut novel.”

  — VOYA

• “Mayhew grew up in Charlotte in the 1950s, so the voices ring unflinchingly true. Jubie is a compelling heroine in the mold of Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees. This mesmerizing story takes place when segregation is being challenged in the highways and byways of the Deep South, no matter what the Supreme Court has ruled. Local color dominates with a tent revival, a traveling carnival, Claxton fruitcakes, sandy white beaches, and white gloves and heels, as the setting emerges as a pivotal character in this important debut novel.”

  — VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)

• “A beautifully written and important novel. Set in the 1950s South, it deals with race relations in an original, powerful way. It’s also a great story about complicated family relationships, told with humor, delicacy, and penetrating insight. I wish I had written this book.”

  — Angela Davis-Gardner, author of Butterfly’s Child

• “Deeply felt, lasting relationships formed in the mid-twentieth-century South between white families and the African American women who took care of them. In The Dry Grass of August, Mayhew explores the love and conflicting loyalties in one such extended family, adult and child, black and white. She does so with honesty and sympathy, intimate knowledge and valuable perspective, as well as beautiful writing. This is an important story about the Southern experience and the women who helped to form the American generation now at the peak of its powers.”

  — Peggy Payne, author of Sister India

• “A must-read for fans of The Help.”

  — Woman’s World

• “Mayhew gives readers a compelling and insightful protagonist…Mayhew keeps the story taut, thoughtful, and complex, elevating it from the throng of coming-of-age books.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “Because the novel is totally true to Jubie’s point of view, it generates gripping drama as we watch her reach beyond authority to question law and order.”

  — Booklist

• “The Dry Grass of August will keep you glued to its pages with its intensity and demonstration of strong bonds of familial love that often extend beyond immediate family.”

  — RT Book Reviews (4 stars)