Wrong Side of the Tracks

Wrong Side of the Tracks

YA novels
Probably in your younger years you were told to stay away from
certain peers. Maybe they came from the wrong neighborhood, the wrong
family. Maybe they wore too much makeup and too short skirts and were
rumored to smoke in the school bathroom and be loose. They were so
fallen that just associating with them would taint you.
Well recently I read two excellent YA historical fiction novels
told from the perspective of wrong side teens. Shadrach, 14,
protagonist of A. B. Westrick's Brotherhood, is part of a KKK family
in the post Civil War South. Ruby Jacinski, narrator of Christine
Fletcher's Ten Cents A Dance, is a 1940's taxi dancer. An added
bonus: the stories behind the writing of the novels are gems in their
own right.
Brotherhood has a very dramatic first chapter. Shadrach wakes
up to a real life nightmare. Government agents break into his house
and arrest his older brother, Jeremiah. Their widowed mother tells
him to go get his grandfather. A man who was stuffed into a barrel
and left to die has lived long enough to identify 'the Weaver boy' as
one of his assailants.
Shadrach had seen Jeremiah slip out of their bedroom window and
followed him into the night darkness. He'd ended up being
blindfolded, guided to a covert location, and then initiated into a
secret society. At first it seems to be all good. He enjoys the
commaraderie and the way members look out for each other. And what
could be wrong about protecting Confederate widows and orphans?
Gradually Shadrach learns of the organization's dark secrets.
At first there are tasks he doesn't feel right about. When he and a
friend are sent to intimidate a black family he sees abject terror in
children's eyes. Then after awhile things turn downright ugly.
The entirity of Shadrach's family is involved in or knowing of
KKK activities. But much of what Shadrach is learning convinces him
they could be dangerously wrong and harming innocent people. You want
to talk about divided loyalties.
"In this novel, I tried to depict the tensions ordinary,
impoverished, and poorly educated white Southerners might have felt
during the period of Reconstruction. They were grieving massive
losses of property, friends, and family while struggling to understand
and adjust to enormous political and economic changes."
Westrick's parents, former Southerners, raised their daughter in
Pennsylvania. She and her husband moved to Virginia in quest of her
roots. Brotherhood is the fruit of her search for her ancestor's fate.
Ten Cents A Dance was also conceived from its authors curiosity
about her family history. Fletcher's mother had an Aunt Sofia whom
her grandmother refused to speak about. As a teen, Sofia had been
kicked out of her family by her father who declared her dead and
forbid the rest of the clan to see her. She had supported herself as
a taxi dancer.
"Taxi dancers inhabited a kind of grey area: they weren't
prostitutes, but the profession certainly wasn't respectable, either.
Men paid, not for sex, but to be able to hold a pretty girl close for
the length of a dance, a girl who would listen to them and pay
attention to them. Girls (and they often were girls) chose it because
it seemed fun, and because they could earn easily twice as much money
as they might in a factory or other socially acceptable job."
This was certainly the case with Ruby Jacinski. As the book
opens her life seems bleak indeed. At an age when girls today think
of boyfriends, social lives, and college she's the sole support of her
arthritis crippled mother and her younger still-in-school sister,
working canning pickled pigs' feet. "I'd been there a month and
already I felt a hundred years old. Just another packinghouse worker
in a bloody, soaking apron; fingernails soft and cracking from the
brine; and a smell I couldn't get out of my skin..."
Not surprisingly, when a bad boy with a whispered about history,
Paulie, returns to her neighborhood and shows an interest in her Ruby
is intrigued. He says that with her dancing ability she doesn't need
to work in a packinghouse. She could earn much more. And he knows
who she should go see.
Right off Ruby is drawn into the feuds and alliances of her
chosen profession. She learns that the top earners do a lot more than
dancing, often duping clients for the big bucks. Figuring out just
how far she wants to go is very tricky. She is in love with Paulie,
who appears and disappears mysteriously. He may not be who she wants
him to be. The nightclub scene has its gangster connections. And
there's always the danger she might be found out and disowned by the
mother who believes she's working as a night shift telephone operator.
Both Brotherhood and Ten Cents A Dance are exquisitely written
novels in which the narrators come of age under circumstances that
would challenge adults. They are very good choices for high school
students who need books for independent reading and don't want bland,
boring, and superficial.
On a personal note, last night Orono Arts Cafe was the total cat's
pajamas. We opened with a jazz band. The joint was jumping. The
audience was really supportive. When I read my poetry they were
really into it. The last few acts we had a bird (that almost everyone
thought was a bat) flying around the room. Never a dull moment.
A great big shout out goes out to all who shared that very enchanting
evening. YOWZA!
Julia Emily Hathaway



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