Cookie & Me — Mary Jane Ryals

With an ear for regional voices as pitch perfect as a tuning fork, Mary Jane Ryals brings to life her beloved South during the tumultuous days of the early civil rights movement. Set in Tallahassee, Florida, Cookie & Me tells the story of Rayann, who is white and somewhat privileged, and Cookie, who is black and living a marginalized life that Rayann never realized existed until one life-changing summer. Cookie and Me is fresh and poignant, a beautifully-written story about two young girls, one black, one white, and how they get caught up in an explosive real-life episode during the Civil Rights Movement. Mary Jane Ryals writes like a sassy hybrid of Eudora Welty and Lee Smith. Rayann Woods, her heroine, is as bitingly funny as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and as sharply honest as Huck Finn. Ryals knows her North Florida backwoods, her debutantes, her good ole boys and her Jim Crow history. This novel is at once charming and unsparing, hilarious and profound. I hope this isn't the last we hear from Rayann. She's my kind of girl. -Diane (D. K.) Roberts, Dream State; The Myth of Aunt Jemima; Between Two Rivers Cookie & Me is every bit as evocative of race relations in the South as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Mary Jane Ryals' Tallahassee, Florida is a kissing cousin of Lee's Maycomb, Alabama. The story is set in the turbulent sixties and features two main characters who struggle across racial lines to form a friendship that sustains them both. The writing is so visceral, you can almost hear Aretha, feel the humidity and taste the mulberries. I love this book. -Lu Vickers, Breathing Underwater; Weeki Wachee: City of Mermaids