Twelve-year-old Marie is a leader among the popular black girls in Chauncey, Ohio, a prosperous black suburb. She isn't looking for a friend when Lena Bright, a white girl, appears in school. Yet they are drawn to each other because both have lost their mothers. And they know how to keep a secret. For Lena has a secret that is terrifying, and she's desperate to protect herself and her younger sister from their father. Marie must decide whether she can help Lena by keeping her secret...or by telling it. From the Paperback edition. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

This sensitive yet gritty novel about incest may be Woodson's ( Between Madison and Palmetto ) strongest work to date. Marie, the eighth-grade narrator, lives in an all-black suburb of Athens, Ohio, with her father; her mother, who has inherited money from her own parents, sends arty messages from the far-flung locales she has toured since leaving the family two years ago. Ignoring the sneers of her friends--and her father's warnings--Marie befriends ``whitetrash'' Lena, the new girl at school. Woodson confronts sticky questions about race head-on, with the result that her observations and her characterizations are all the more trustworthy. Her approach to the incest theme is less immediate but equally convincing--Marie receives Lena's restrained confidences about being molested, at first disbelieving Lena, then torn between her desire to help her friend and her promise not to tell anyone. Lena has tried all the textbook solutions--including reporting her father to the authorities--and has learned that outside interference only brings more trouble. Marie, struggling to cope with her mother's desertion, must accept Lena's disappearance, too, when Lena and her younger sister first decide to run away and then do flee. Told in adroitly sequenced flashbacks, Woodson's novel is wrenchingly honest and, despite its sad themes, full of hope and inspiration. Ages 12-up. Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 7 Up-This exceptional book is told from the viewpoint of Marie, a popular eighth grader in a predominantly black, middle-class school. When a poor white girl shows up mid-term, Marie finds herself drawn to Lena; both have recently lost their mothers. Despite social and familial pressures, an awkward friendship develops. Then Lena blurts out that her father is molesting her. Marie avoids her, unable to face the awfulness of what she's been told. When Lena confronts her, Marie in turn doubts that she is telling the truth, blames her friend, and then feels impotent rage. Lena shouts back, "`Don't be hating me. It ain't about me!'" Far from being a diatribe on child abuse, this novel explores the complex and often contradictory responses of individuals-and society-to the plight of abused children. With searing honesty, Woodson shows Lena's father for the damaged and pitiful person that he is. She raises questions for which society has no answers. By skillfully weaving together themes of abandonment, emotional maturation, and friendship across social and economic barriers, the author goes far deeper than the typical ``problem novel.'' Lena's tragedy-her only recourse is to take her sister and run-is balanced by Marie's ability to come to terms with the loss of her mother and by her decision to tell her friend's story so that ``maybe someday other girls like you and me can fly through this stupid world without being afraid.'' Lena's hope lies in the fact that she does break through, express her anger, and get out. While there are no easy answers for either girl, there is honesty, growth, and love in their relationship that gives young readers hope for the future.-Carolyn Polese, Humboldt State Univ., Arcata, CACopyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

/*STARRED REVIEW*/ Gr. 5-9. In a quiet, beautiful friendship story, two young teenagers resist the bigotry in their school and the sorrow in their families and help each other find the strength to go on.<^P>Marie tells the story; she's black and smart, part of the well-dressed crowd in her middle-class black suburb near Athens, Ohio. Lena is a poor white girl, new at school, one of those living in the "crevices at the edge of town." Both have lost their mothers--Lena's mother died of breast cancer; Marie's left two years ago to find herself--and grief is one of the things that connects the girls. The other kids sneer at Lena as white trash and call Marie an Uncle Tom for befriending the scruffy girl. Lena is dirty and unkempt, but not only because of poverty and loss. She tells Marie a secret and swears her to secrecy: "My daddy does things to me." The sexual abuse is quietly told, spelled out in terms of the rage and helplessness that Lena says she feels, her need to get out of the house as fast as she can and take her little sister with her.<^P>Woodson's last book, Between Madison and Palmetto (1993), also about friendship, was poorly developed, with too much happening all over the place. In contrast, this brief novel is controlled, each chapter like a film cut, with its own tight structure and falling beat, whether the scene is the crowded school cafeteria or Marie's kitchen. The casual dialogue is sharp with pain, soft with affection; as much is said in the spaces between the words as in what is spoken. "Ain't got no quarter to call for help," Lena says just before she takes off with her sister and runs away.<^P>Through Marie's eyes, we see people in muddle and conflict. The characters are complicated. Marie's mother walked away from her, but it was she who taught Marie to look at people without stereotyping. We feel the mother's absence and, also, her desperate need to get away. Marie's college-professor father is a bigot who sees the world in "black and white," but he's a loving parent to her, and his grief at his wife's leaving is heartfelt. The girls' friendship isn't idealized. They quarrel and hurt each other, even as they get close. At first Marie succumbs to the pressures around her and turns on Lena. In anger she calls Lena a liar, accuses her of wanting attention, of liking what her father does to her. But their friendship helps both girls find joy and courage. They know from bitter experience that catastrophe can hit you anytime. Neither trusts the world, but you can see "how they're planning to blast through it."<^P>The racism and class prejudice on all sides is graphically confronted. "Must be trash," Marie's father says when he first hears she has a white friend. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, he wants separation from the white world that he hates for hating him. Marie challenges him: how come he doesn't want her to say nigger, but it's okay to say white trash?<^P>Woodson's fine novel Maizon at Blue Hill (1992) dramatized the pain of the outsider who suddenly finds herself a "minority" in a fancy prep school. This time the minority is white, and the black teenager is shocked into awareness of the segregation and the privilege she's taken for granted. With all these issues, the novel could easily have drowned in politics and social problems. In fact, there is a didactic chapter that seems patched on, where the friends read aloud together from Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals about her battle with breast cancer, and they find messages that help them in a harsh world. In Maizon at Blue Hill, Woodson did the same thing with Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, showing kids talking about books and ideas as part of growing up. But even the messages are uncertain, opening out to possibilities rather than offering slick answers.<^P>There's a bittersweet moment when Lena's little sister, Dion, meets Marie for the first time and glares at her: "You ain't told me she was black," Dion accuses her sister. Right. That's how it is when you make a friend. The candor is welcome here and the hope. (Reviewed Feb. 15, 1994)0385320310Hazel Rochman From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.