First Line Friday {8/23/2019} Featuring The Means that Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg

Happy Friday! This week has been very full here, and I can only imagine it has been even more so for everyone who started back to school. For today’s First Line Friday, I’m featuring a book I recently finished and highly recommend: The Means that Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg.

“A tangle of arms reaching toward the fig tree. Among the thicket of deep- black arms stretching toward the fruit, two arms stood out, pale as a full moon.”

Title:  The Means that Make Us Strangers

Author: Christine Kindberg

Genre: YA, recent historical fiction (1960s)

Goodreads synopsis: Home is where your people are. But who are your people?

Adelaide has lived her whole life in rural Ethiopia as the white American daughter of an anthropologist. Then her family moves to South Carolina, in 1964. Adelaide vows to find her way back to Ethiopia, marry Maicaah, and become part of the village for real. But until she turns eighteen, Adelaide must adjust to this strange, white place that everyone tells her is home. Then Adelaide becomes friends with the five African-American students who sued for admission into the white high school. Even as she navigates her family’s expectations and her mother’s depression, Adelaide starts to enjoy her new friendships, the chance to learn new things, and the time she spends with a blond football player. Life in Greenville becomes interesting, and home becomes a much more complex equation.
Adelaide must finally choose where she belongs: the Ethiopian village where she grew up, to which she promised to return? Or this place where she’s become part of something bigger than herself?

It is obvious from the very beginning that this book deals with difficult topics. It does it so well, though! I am thoroughly impressed by this book, and I think any YA reader would be as well. My full review of The Means that Make Us Strangers will post next week.

First Line Friday is a weekly linkup hosted at Hoarding Books. To participate, share the first line of a book of your choice, add the link to the linkup on the host’s page, and check out what others are reading and sharing!

Until the next chapter,

Jana