Girl Gone North — John McIlveen

Shortlisted for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation Award.

Sisters Emma and Thalia Holden are raised in a home of limited means, reasonable happiness, but abundant love, and life in the Lower Ninth Ward is good to their youthful eyes despite vicious battles for and against segregation flaring in the streets of their city and across America.

In what seems a dream opportunity, nineteen-year-old Emma accepts a job for a prominent white family outside of Boston, where she could attend Lesley College, one of the few accepting black women in 1961. When tragedy strikes back home, Emma wonders if it is penance for leaving her family in search of a better life.

With her parents gone, her sister in Boston, and her brother awaiting deployment to Vietnam, sixteen-year-old Thalia endures life with her elderly grandfather and her hard-drinking and lewd Uncle Carl until a late-night encounter turns into a fight for her life and Thalia realizes New Orleans is no longer home. Carrying only a duffle bag, forty-two dollars, and two Steinbeck novels, Thalia embarks on an extraordinary journey from New Orleans to Boston, accompanied by her three-legged dog, Bacchus. With no clue of what lay ahead, she encounters extreme prejudice, perversity, and the challenges of nature, but also finds compassion from a diversity of characters including an elusive and eccentric vagrant who goes by the name Nash Rambler - and who just might be her guardian angel.

Emma, struggling with guilt and grief, continues caring for the Merricks, a wealthy but sympathetic family of five, but discovers she is recklessly but helplessly falling for their oldest son, Marty, who complicates matters by having a mutual infatuation. Despite their attempt at confidentiality, their relationship is revealed but not well received.

Tension mounts and tempers flare, culminating in a shocking act of violence.

Gone North is a tale of family, love, humor, conflict, and ultimately hope, involving humanity at its worst and at its best. It will appeal to fans of The Help and The Secret Life of Bees.