Long Way Home — Cheryl A. Head

Georgette Newton seems to have a predictable future. She will work on the family farm, marry her high school sweetheart, and continue the tradition of raising kids and crops in rural North Carolina. But she yearns to see the exciting places she reads about in Look magazine, and infuriates her parents when, during World War 2, she joins the exclusive U.S. Women's Army Auxiliary Corps. LeRoy Dowdell is a sensitive boy, a misfit in his family and his community. A world-class musician, he longs to play in a big band like that of Tommy Dorsey or Duke Ellington. He lies about his age to enlist in the army, and escape his disapproving father and the rumors of a small town. He hopes a soldier's uniform will be his ticket to travel overseas where Negro jazz performers are revered. It is 1943 and America's involvement in the Great War is at its height. The paths of these two young dreamers cross on a segregated army base near Tucson, Arizona where they fall in love, fight personal battles, forge new friendships and complete their journeys of self-discovery. Nearly one million black soldiers served in WWII but most never faced combat. Long Way Home imagines the daily lives and sacrifices of these men and women, far away from the front lines, whose struggles and triumphs paved the way for civil rights in America.