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In Colorado during the late 1940s, two teenage girls, one black and one white, are thrown together through random circumstance. It isn't a pairing in line with that of Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Jim—far from it. These two confront their prejudices head-on as they develop unbreakable bonds. This historical novel is about race relations in the U.S. but also so much more. The main characters, Clydeen Hollifield and Annie Cahill, discover what friendship means and how vital it is to the human spirit to be needed, and hopefully even cherished. The story shows how humans thrive by caring for others and wither without it.
With her superb writing talent, the author weaves the real and the spiritual together. The kind, tolerant neighbor Mrs. Borsheim explains, "...most religions teach, that human beings possess some sort of essence beyond the physical body...the soul or the spirit. Spiritualism is the practice of communicating with souls..." She describes tarot readings and signs people may receive beyond their five senses. Late in the book, readers won't know whether some events are dreamt or real but soon discover that, in this case, it hardly matters. Sometimes it is nice when the audience gets to decide for themselves if the ending is a happy one.
The novel is chock-full of philosophical poetry along with everything else. Cahill muses, "It comforts me to think perhaps this is how prayers, spoken and unspoken, are answered and make it possible for people to change." Peizer's book is a work of historical fiction that evokes strong emotions and waxes poetic in the philosophical and metaphysical realms. Already well worth reading, it also adds in a thrilling story that keeps readers on the edges of their seats. In short, this is professional writing at its best.