The Help

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

It's 1962 in Jackson, MS.  Skeeter Phelan came home from Ole Miss trying to  be a writer, and a woman in NYC advises her to find a good idea.  Skeeter decides to write a novel about the black maids that raise white children in Jackson, and what happens to those children and those women after that caregiver relationship ends.  And how the maids are treated by the white women who pay them.

This book was really good.  I enjoyed reading about Aibileen and how she cares for the babies and Minny was hillarious and heartbreaking.

This time period is always hard for me to read about, as it just seems so foreign.  Like another planet.  Not the same country that I live in just 50 years earlier.  The segregation, the racism, the crazy Junior League women who think they run the world.  Oh wait those women still exist.

I tease but it was hard to read.  Worth reading, but hard to read.  I've recommended it to the bookclub I'm in.

My only complaint would be the ending, though I'm not sure why.  I found myself turning another page, looking for the rest.  I don't know what would have made me happy.  But it was so sad and heartbreaking.  I really felt for the characters.