Between Earth and Sky: friendship, betrayal and the sacrifices made in order to belong

Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore is a tragic story that intersects the white and Native American culture when a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal and the sacrifices made in order to belong. One morning in Philadelphia in 1906, Alma Mitchell reads a newspaper headline that shakes her to her core and brings to the surface a past she kept hidden. A federal agent was killed and Harry Muskrat, or Asku as Alma knew him, is the prime suspect. Asku was once the most promising student at the Stover School, a “savage-taming” boarding school that was run by her father. The school was created to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Assimilation at the cost of everything they've known: their language, customs, and their very names. Alma knows the boy she knew would never commit murder but doesn’t recognize the man he had become: an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Stewart, her lawyer husband, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku. Will they be able to successfully defend Asku? What will happen when Alma finally must reveal the secrets she hides? 

Between Earth and Sky is told between alternating timelines between Alma’s childhood and the present. It is a beautifully complex story that tells a haunting and yet true period of American History. While there were some motives that were altruistic, others were determined to kill the Indian in the man. It is a story that will break your heart as you read the harsh treatment that was done to ensure the Indian cultures were erased. In some cases, they have succeeded as many Indian languages have been lost to time while others are seeing a resurgence due to the careful preservations. It is a story about love, loss, justice and the journey toward understanding and atonement. The growth that Alma goes through from the beginning to the end of the book is difficult. At some points, I thought she would never truly see what her Native friends were trying to show her. I have read about the Indian boarding schools before and this book does an excellent job depicting the cruelty and harshness toward the native students. I enjoyed Between Earth and Sky and highly recommend it. 

Between Earth and Sky is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook. 

 

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The Kindest Lie: when moving forward means confronting the past

The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson is the story of the past and a lie told to protect interferes with the present. The story opens on Election Night 2008 and Barack Obama has just been elected the new president of the United States, As his coming inauguration brings the promise of new hope for the future, Ruth Tuttle Shaw, an Ivy-League Black engineer, seemingly has it all, a successful career, a kind and successful husband, Xavier. Xavier is eager to start a family but Ruth is uncertain. She has never forgotten the baby she gave birth to at 17. She was forced to leave him behind to attend college. She promised her grandmother, the woman who raised her and she called Mama, that she would never look back. Ruth realizes that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. She returns home to the Indiana factory town where she finds the town plagued by unemployment, racism and despair. As she begins her search into the past, she befriends a young boy, Patrick aka “Midnight.” Midnight is a young white boy who desperately wants a place to belong. As Ruth begins to follow the clues to uncover the secrets surrounding her baby boy, secrets her family is desperate to leave in the past, an incident occurs which adds fuel to the town’s racial tensions. Can Ruth discover the truth? Will the truth upend the lives of all involved? 

The Kindest Lie is a powerful and revealing look into the divide between Black and White communities. Even with the election of the first Black president, many Black residents of the town were skeptical that things would change. The book is also an unwavering look of motherhood in contemporary America and the search for the American Dream. Ruth is a woman who is caught between two worlds. She doesn’t seem to belong among those she grew up with in the small town but she also seems lost in the world of the big city. As she digs into the past, she discovers more about her grandparents, her absent mother and the desire for her to become more than just a statistic in their small town. It is a story of the complicated and messy aspects of love. It is a story of how small lies can grow into bigger lies, “a lifetime of doing wrong for the right reasons. A lifetime of lies that started small, like a nick in the windshield, then eventually shattered the glass.” It is a story of the realization that there are no perfect mothers, just perfectly flawed ones who do what they can in the moment and pray it all works out. I highly recommend The Kindest Lie. It is a powerful, heartbreaking look into the lives of Americans. Black, white, poor, successful and everyone in between, we are all searching for the same things: a place to belong, a family to love and a better future than the struggles of the past. 

The Kindest Lie is available in hardcover, paperback, eBook and audiobook.