Apron Strings by Mary Morony
About the Book:
When a grown-up tells you not to worry, you had better
start—first rule of thumb, Sallee Mackey, age seven. She is already more than a
little bit wary of the adults in her segregated, Southern world with good
reason. Sallee’s mother Ginny is flat out dangerous; her father Joe is on his
way out the door; and Mr. Dabney the bigoted neighbor seems to be just a little
too interested with the goings on at Sallee’s house—like he knows something no
one else does.
The only adult to be trusted is Ethel, the family maid, who
has known Sallee’s mother since Ethel and Ginny were both girls. That complicated
relationship started the day Ethel spied Ginny kissing the black stable boy
years ago. While Ginny has conveniently forgotten that she even knew Ethel back
then, Sallee has not as she constantly lobs questions at Ethel about her
mother’s girlhood.
From Sallee’s oft times humorous and always guileless
vantage, grownups have a most mixed up view of the world. Ethel gives her very
own biased account of her shared history with Ginny while Sallee hones her
vigilance and stealth, skills she and her brother and two sisters have acquired
in an attempt to understand the drama that swirls around them.
Rocks are thrown through windows, a car filled with angry
white men shout racial slurs at the children at play and a tragic poisoning
threatens the entire family’s sense of security. When Joe Mackey asks Ethel to
testify on his behalf in a custody suit, her conflicted loyalties throw the
entire family into even more turmoil. Fortunately for Sallee no one took the
time to teach her to hate a person based on the skin color.
About the Author:
Mary Morony author of Apron
Strings is one of six children. She was born in Charlottesville, Virginia
and had the good fortune of being raised by her family’s maid Lottie. She taught me love and acceptance with
warm, loving humor and unending patience. It was a time and place of
segregated schools and water fountains, as well as restaurants and movie
theaters that prohibited black customers. She remembers the hurled epithets and smashed windows of a society
boiling in hatred.
Besides five
siblings she had four children of her own. As if that didn't provide sufficient
material about family chaos, at the age of forty-something, with a high school
daughter and a four-year-old girl still at home, she decided to get a college
degree. Mary likes to say she earned, and she does mean earned, a bachelors of
arts in English at the University of Virginia, with a concentration in creative
writing. More
recently she has pursued additional studies under the tutelage of her
seven-year-old granddaughter. Her refresher course in childhood perspective was
invaluable in writing this book.
The author lives on a farm in Orange County, Virginia, with her husband, four dogs, and her daughter’s cat.
The author lives on a farm in Orange County, Virginia, with her husband, four dogs, and her daughter’s cat.
Mary says, “The
relationship I was privileged to experience taught me much about the human
heart and the redemptive power of love, especially between races.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.