April 2008
Karen Vaughn Book Club
"Freshwater Road" by Denise Nicholas

April Book Club Gathering and Coffee Tasting
April 19, 2008 11am-1pm
Starbuck Coffeehouse
Sheridan Street and North Park Road
Hollywood, One Mile west of 1-95

Synopsis
Once you begin reading this book, you will become entrenched in this story will every word. It's like you become part of history as author Denise Nicolas (Room 222; In the Heat of the Night) tells the story of one young woman's coming of age via the political and social upheavals of the civil rights movement. Nineteen-year-old Celeste Tyree leaves Ann Arbor to go to Pineyville, Mississippi, in the summer of 1964 to help found a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. As the summer unfolds, she confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also deep truths about her family and herself. Drawing on Nicholas' own involvement in the movement, Freshwater Road was hailed by Newsday as "Perhaps the best work of fiction ever done about the civil rights movement."

This book reminds us of the change our country endeavored during the 1960's, with politics, race, and social change taking center stage in American lives this year. Let's revisit the past to strength our future.