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When 12-year-old Emma Walker comes to Moundville, Ala., with her father, the new postmaster, Harry “Dit” Sims feels it’s “the worst piece of bad luck” he’s ever had. He was hoping for a boy to play ball with but got a “colored” girl instead. But he teaches her to throw and hit a baseball and how to dig a cave, and she teaches him about math and books. Gradually they become best friends and even allies in the rescue of a black barber unjustly jailed and sentenced to hang. Levine draws on her grandfather’s recollections to skillfully delineate the nuances of race relations in a small Southern town in 1917, where kindness and politeness sometimes trumped prejudice and ordinary people found ways to treat each other decently. Dit and Emma are likable protagonists, and the growth of their friendship, along with Dit’s emerging moral conscience, make this a fine debut novel by an author to watch. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
