If you loved "To Kill a Mockingbird"......
by Maxine
Carrie Brown's second novel, The Rope Walk is a stirring, atmospheric coming of age story of ten year old Alice Macauley who is the youngest child of five and the only daughter of Archie MacCauley, Shakespeare scholar, professor and widower. They live in a small town outside the college town of Brattleboro, Vermont. Alice grows up rough-housing with her older brothers who she adores but is anticipating a lonely summer as they all return to work and school after her birthday celebration. But into her life comes Theo, a bi-racial boy and an adventurer like her. They are both invited to come and read to Kenneth Fitzgerald, an artist dying of AIDS who has come to live with his sister. Themes of prejudice, friendship and tolerance pervade this novel whose luminous prose takes us all back to those long idle summers when, as children, days of lying in a hammock climbing trees or building forts in a stream were enough to make us happy.
Blog Post