Worth Tuttle Hedden (–1985)

I bought this vintage pulp novel based on the tagline on the cover:

"A Southern White Girl Gets the Shock of Her Life"

From the very first sentence we are given a window into another world -- the world of the Southern white woman before the civil rights movement. But unlike most novels set in that world, this one actually has black characters. We get to see what their lives are like, what kind of people they were and something of what they dreamed and hoped for. In that setting we see this young sheltered timid white girl (from a "good" family) fall in love with a handsome, tender, charismatic and intelligent man. A man who just *happens* to be black. His race is a part of him but it doesn't wholly define him. No one in this book is a stereotype -- except for Nina, and even she grows out of that in time.… (mehr)