Author(s): Laurence Anholt

Young Adult Fiction

Jack has left his native Ireland and is making a new life as Professor of Neurology at a university in the American South. He has certain skills, honed over his lifetime, that he mostly keeps hidden. Skills in hypnotism and mind control...

Thirteen-year-old Pip is plucked out of an orphanage by a farmer, hired as a farm-hand, and as carer for the farmer's wife. But Pip is black. The farmer and his wife are white. And this is 1960s America, where race defines you and overshadows everything. As racial tensions reach boiling point with a danger closer to home and more terrifying than either thought possible, Jack and Pip's lives become inextricably linked. And Jack's hypnotic skills are called on as never before...

Tiffany's Review:

In the south of the United States, the colour of your skin dictates your present and your future. And this is the 1960s.

Fourteen year-old black Pip is sold by his orphanage to a white farmer who takes bewildered Pip miles from home to act as a carer to his invalid wife. On the farm, Pip meets Irishman Jack, a hypnotist and neurology professor.  Jack offers to home-school Pip and Hannah, a mute Native American girl, the farm cook. Jack uses his hypnotism to attempt to unravel the mystery of Hannah's lost voice. Through their shared love of stories, notably Dickens' Great Expectations, Pip and the farmer’s wife develop a relationship of mutual respect and tenderness. But outside of these growing friendships and the budding romance between Pip and Hannah, racial tensions are simmering close to boiling point. The farmer’s son, Erwin, an angry Vietnam veteran and white supremacist, looms large over the farm.
 
The book’s narration switches between Pip, Jack, and Hannah, giving their unique perspectives on a troubled time in American history. The tension grows with the arrival in the area of the Ku Klux Klan and its special breed of hatred. This is a remarkable and extremely moving story of friendship, respect, and courage, made all the more timely by recent events in the United States and Europe. This is Laurence Anholt’s first novel for YA readers but his name may be familiar from his many younger children’s books co-written with his wife Catherine (for example, Chimp and Zee, Camille and the Sunflowers, and the Seriously Silly Stories series).

This book is highly recommended for readers 12+.