School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Having been told that her mother is dead, 12-year-old Georgia Tate Jamison has enjoyed an idyllic childhood in the warm embrace of her maternal grandparents. When her mostly absent father demands that she vacation with him and his new wife, Sissy, in Florida, Reverend and Mrs. Tate reluctantly allow him to assert his parental rights. Soon, Georgia calls her grandmother for rescue from her father's sexual advances. The Tates come for her immediately, but neither Georgia nor her grandmother can bring herself to tell anyone else what has happened. Then the girl learns that her mother is not dead, but has left after being discharged from an insane asylum, and Nana suddenly passes away. Believing he is doing the right thing, Grandfather Tate sends her to be with her father. Infuriated by the obvious sexual seduction, Sissy kicks them out, and Georgia finds herself in a filthy apartment, hoping her father will get drunk enough each night to leave her alone. As she is more severely sexually battered, Tamika, a transvestite, helps her. Amateau offers numerous well-developed characters including positive male role models in her grandfather and an unlikely ex-con who befriends her on the bus. The '70s social pecking order seen through Georgia's eyes is unvarnished and truthful. From the smell of the fish frying at home to the feasts offered at summer revivals, this novel is very Southern, yet universal in essence. Encompassing terrible things, this is still a story of faith and differing facets of individual spirituality. A moving first offering.-Cindy Darling Codell, formerly at Clark Middle School, Winchester, KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Narrator Georgia Tate is 12 years old when her father resurfaces with a brittle new wife, demanding that his daughter spend time with him. He sexually molests her. Once Georgia?s maternal grandmother (and guardian) brings her home again, the girl?s best friend unleashes a secret: Georgia?s mother isn?t dead, she disappeared soon after trying to kill herself, following Georgia?s birth. Georgia confronts her beloved Nana with this information but before they can resolve things, Nana drops dead in the Mississippi heat after mowing the lawn. Over Georgia?s protests, Granddaddy Tate, who doesn?t know about the abuse, sends the girl back to Florida to live with her father. The man makes his daughter dress trashy and ultimately rapes her. When Georgia is attacked by some boys and arrives home bloodied, a big-hearted transvestite neighbor takes her in and the details of her summer from hell pour out. Granddaddy sends her bus money but has a near-fatal car accident on his way to pick her up from the bus station. There is some fine writing in this first novel?the portrait of Granddaddy is particularly well-drawn, and Georgia experiences moments of kindness?but the implausible tsunami of tragic events overwhelms everything else. Ages 14-up. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Horn Book Review
In this wrenching southern novel, twelve-year-old Georgia Tate, raised by her grandparents, goes to live with her sexually abusive father after her grandmother's death. Though Georgia's misfortune verges on melodrama, her voice is convincingly naive, and the help she receives from an eclectic mix of friends, one of whom is a drag queen, infuses the novel with warmth and hope. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Although this debut shows promise in its engaging narrative voice, too many tragedies and unusual characters, including a transvestite and a generous ex-con, overwhelm the plot. Twelve-year-old Georgia Tate Jamison has a contented life with her grandparents in Mississippi in 1975, until the father she barely knows invites her to visit him and then sexually abuses her. She returns to her grandparents' home, but when her grandmother dies, her caring grandfather, unaware of the abuse, ignores Georgia's fear of her father and sends her off to live with him, where the abuse worsens. Ample details create a strong sense of time and place, and Georgia gains the reader's sympathy with her friendliness and love of life. However, the ending is marred by her implausibly quick emotional recovery from the incest, and, equally implausible, the implication that her father will be easily made to forfeit custody of her and even be imprisoned for the abuse. (Fiction. 13+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.