Ann H. Gabhart, Orchard of Hope

Orchard of Hope

Ann H. Gabhart

Revell, Mar 2007, $12.99

ISBN: 0800731697

In 1964 Hollyhill, Kentucky, fourteen-year-old Jocie Brooke makes friends with the new negro family from Chicago; especially the son Noah Herndon nearest her age. However, Noah assumes that Jocie is a fake who thinks she knows black people and so has doubts about the friendship; besides which he and his family know how the white hierarchy will react to a colored boy hanging with a magnolia.

Meanwhile Jocie's father David, owner and editor of the Hollyhill Barrier and a pastor argues for human dignity and rights. He is seeing someone for the first time since his former wife Adrienne left without a look back, taking their older daughter, then thirteen-year-old Tabitha, with her. However, David shocks Noah and the townsfolk when he offers the lad a job at his newspaper. Even more stunning, he invites the Herndons to attend the church where he serves as pastor as he believes God would want him to but his flock is not as tolerant.

ORCHARD OF HOPE, the sequel to the insightful THE SCENT OF LILACS, is an interesting Christian historical family drama that focuses on race and family relationships during the civil rights movement. The cast is fully developed, especially the Herndon and Brooke families. Although there are too many subplots taking away from the prime tale of the civil rights movement in a small segregated Kentucky town considering integrating schools especially since everyone knows the best teacher in town is a black woman, Ann Gabhart provides a strong inspirational look at a time of momentous change.

Harriet Klausner