Swift River - rounded up to 4

[Susan]

I enjoyed this book for the most part. It’s a debut novel about a teenaged girl, Diamond, living in a racist town in New England, with her white mother and Black father – until the father disappears. Diamond weighs over 300 pounds and is the frequent butt of jokes and unkindnesses from her classmates. But she’s smarter than they are and she copes rather well with their meanness. Meanwhile she thinks about her father, rumored to be alive somewhere, and dreams of escaping her impoverished life with a mother who can barely manage a hand-to-mouth existence for them. All this is a very bleak an sad picture. It’s filled out by some family history, provided in letters from a paternal aunt (in present time) and another female relative from the past. The town is fictional, but the author uses it to provide historical information about “sunset laws” which kept Black people from being out after dark and other racially discriminatory behaviors. It’s all too easy to believe and the author seems to have researched her subject. I’m rounding up to a 4 because this is a debut novel.