Monday, September 17, 2012

Reviews - THE LITTLE ROCK MESSENGER



                                                  www.amazon.com/dp/B003YOSYHK



A taut, riveting, deeply moving thriller...

"...Like Paul Gallico's brilliant novel, THE BOY WHO INVENTED THE BUBBLE GUN, this fine novel has as its protagonist a young boy who seemingly comes of age during a single bus ride.  The author somehow manages to bridge the gap between Europe in World War II and the American South during the civil rights upheaval of the 1950s.  And the formula works splendidly.  From the get-go the author has a difficult task: keeping a whirlwind plot moving while providing background information on the many disparate characters involved in the race to reach Atlanta.  In the hands of this talented author it not only works, but it is a novel that kept me reading at the edge of my seat right until the very end.  NOTE: as well as being a terrific thriller, this is a terrific novel for young adult readers to learn a few things about America's past during the civil rights era and before..."

- T. Bundrick


My First Review

"...The opening chapter hooked me immediately and held my attention all the way to the end.  The characters that populate the story are people you really care about, don't trust, dislike, understand, despise and root for.  The main theme of the story is justice, long overdue, but that makes it all the more compelling.  A secondary theme is Jim Crow and ethnic prejudice: in this book the victims are blacks and Jews.  It is the summer of 1956, when America was just beginning to hear about a man named Martin Luther King, Jr., well before the civil rights movement got moving, and some ten years after the Holocaust.  These two historical events merge in a bus ride from Little Rock to Atlanta, covering a three day period, and bring out the worst and best in humanity."

- Larry S. Miller


A Messenger of Faith

"People who take on a dangerous but worthwhile challenge are called courageous.  But a child who does so is extraordinary.  This is the stroy of one such child, a twelve-year old African-American boy living in the South of 1956.  As the story unfolds, the reader feels the heat of summer and the prejudice through the backdrop of a long Greyhound bus ride to Atlanta.  As the central character, the boy is asked by an old man he has just met on the bus to help deliver something important to a woman in Atlanta.  The boy struggles with his fears as a racial minority, and must choose between the safety of inaction and the principles of his strong religious upbringing.  This is a layered story, weaving a message of moral courage into a fast-paced plot that drips with suspense and intrigue..."

- William J.


Very well-written, reads like a masterpiece!

This is a story every American should read.  The author does a superb job of describing the prejudice and discrimination imposed upon innocent victims by our justice system and our society in the aftermath of World War II.  The reader relives the invasion of privacy of suspected Communists and daily degradation of minorities that hindered our country's progress during the mid-twentieth century.

Twelve year old Lincoln South boards a bus traveling from Little Rock, Arkansas to Atlanta, Georgia in 1956.  Lincoln takes one of the seats reserved for African-Americans in the back of the bus.  Lincoln is a sharp lad with keen intuition, whose mother has instilled a strong sense of right and wrong.  Two key players in the story join Lincoln in the back rows.  One is an arrogant, flashy young man running from the law and looking for trouble.  The other is a quiet, reserved foreigner on a mission to right a wrong administered by the Nazi Party during the war.  The foreign stranger attempts to return stolen goods to the rightful owner and realizes that he is being followed by a hired killer.  Both men trust Lincoln, befriend, and involve him in their problems.  Lincoln's involvement with these men makes him the messenger that will change future generations.

This is a very well-written story that reads like a masterpiece.  It is an informative look at life in America during the mid-1950s.

- Alle Wells



                                                   www.amazon.com/dp/B003YOSYHK

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