Historical Fiction
Date Published: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing
In rural Radford, Tennessee, in the 1950s, a white family is killed in an
automobile accident.
Upon hearing the news of her parents’ and grandfather’s deaths,
Jessa runs away with her dog, creating problems for her town, especially for
the sheriff, her parents’ friends, and the Black community that falls
under suspicion. Racial distrust shapes the town’s response to
Jessa’s disappearance, and as the weeks stretch out, the weather poses
increasing challenges for Jessa as she shelters in a hollow tree while
attempting to provide for herself and her dog, Cassie. Help appears from an
unexpected source as a family mystery is revealed.
The Missing Girl and the second book, Jessa Is Back, are placed right in
the midst of “the good old days” and serve as a reminder of the
unabashed nature and danger of white supremacy in the 1950s. These provide
us an opportunity to examine the parallels in events unfolding today
Also in the Series
Historical Fiction
Date Published: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Publisher: Peanut Butter Publishing
Jessa is a different person when she returns to her hometown.
The integrated schools in Oregon allowed her to form a friendship with a
Black girl, and now she sees the local Jim Crow practices in Tennessee with
new eyes. Supported by her Oregon relatives, she becomes an advocate not
only for the inclusion of music throughout the school system of Radford, but
also for friendships that cross racial lines. While she becomes a gadfly to
the school board, her interactions with other members of her town
precipitate crises that uncover support for her position as well as staunch
opposition.
In the South, and also in the rest of the country, a long road stretches
from the 1950s to the present, and we must judge how well we have lived up
to the vision that Jessa’s discovery of interracial friendship
revealed to her.
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