** spoiler alert ** Small Moments: A Child's Memories of the Civil Rights Movement is a work of “creative nonfiction”. In the “Author Q & A” at the end of the story, author Mary Barrows provides the following description of that genre: “The term ‘creative nonfiction’ means sticking to the truth as much as possible. The stories are true, the characters are real people, and the places are real. However, elements used in the craft of fiction are introduced to create cohesion and to introduce ideas.” Does this “creative nonfiction” story work? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no.

There are three major problems. One, the reader is left with a child protagonist, the author in the 1960s, who appears to be obsessing about the family’s black maid and racism, when she probably was doing no such thing. Two, the reader is left with a child protagonist who appears to have incredible insight about what is going on in her family and the country in the 1960s, when she definitely had no such thing. Three, it was totally inappropriate to have a deathbed scene where the maid’s thoughts were being described. There is no way the author knew what this woman, who was not a fictional character, was thinking when she was dying, and it was outrageous for Ms. Barrows to create such fictional thoughts for this book.

Hence, one is left feeling that this story is a bit of an odd duck. Yet, one is also left feeling deeply moved about the life of Amelia MacIntosh, the family’s maid. Amelia MacIntosh was born in 1902 in North Carolina, the last of 13 children. She grew up motherless, never learned to read or write, and her elderly father married her off at the age of 14, to a much older man who had a drinking problem. Her only beloved child, a son, died at the age of 12, from lack of medical care for what was possibly congenital syphilis. She herself died in 1964 from syphilis, gotten from her husband, who may have been part of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. When she died at the end of the story, I could not keep from crying, no matter how hard I tried. Thinking of Amelia MacIntosh’s life and death made the tears flow.

(Note: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)