I received this book as a Goodreads First-Reads giveaway. This memoir explores the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s through the eyes of an 11-year old girl.

Mary's family relocates from Tennessee to New Jersey with their African-American maid, Amelia, at the start of the Civil Rights movement. The young girl has no conception of the turmoil building around her, she only registers the shifting relationship between her parents and Amelia. Southerners to the bone, Mary's father is openly scornful of the grievances of the black community. Her mother is more subtle in her prejudices, but she too takes it for granted that Amelia's life should revolve around the children she cares for with no room for her own personal needs.

Amelia herself is deeply conflicted: she loves the children, but is upset by her employers' lack of empathy for her need to be an individual and her grief over her own lost son and husband. When she becomes ill, Mary's father makes comments in front of his young children that are thoughtless and highly inappropriate. It is only in hindsight that the author gains some understanding of the terrible burden Amelia carried to the day she died.

Barrow provides us with a window into the day-to-day existence of African-Americans in a white, middle-class society where they are still considered just a step above property by their employers. She paints a clear picture of the love between the children and their caretaker that transcends the resentment and anger caused by the mistreatment of her parents.

A must read for anyone who wants a clearer understanding of what it was to be black in an all white world on the cusp of change.