Buttermilk Hill
By Ruth White

      Let me begin by admitting I was a North Carolina girl growing up during the same years as Buttermilk Hill. For me, the book was like coming home again since I was a small town Southern girl finding a way to cope with family strife through my writing. Ruth White does a wonderful job of capturing the good and the bad about small town life in North Carolina in the 1970s, but she does it in a way that is just as relevant today. I appreciated the honesty, but also the love in the book. It's a book with flawed adults, but through the flaws, the characters and the reader loves them anyway. Sometimes it's nice to see a book where the line between good guys and villains is blurred and jumpy. In the end, we're all sometimes the good guys and sometimes the villains -- and that's an important truth to share with young readers, too. In many ways, the book is also about dreams -- the courage it takes to follow them and the pain of seeing them run away without you. The story is hopeful and touching without being sentimental -- definitely a must read.