Whistling Past the Graveyard - by Susan Crandall (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes readers group guide and discussion question.

Book Synopsis

From an award-winning author comes a wise and tender coming-of-age story about a nine-year-old girl who runs away from her Mississippi home in 1963, befriends a lonely woman suffering loss and abuse, and embarks on a life-changing road trip.

Whistling past the graveyard. That's what Daddy called it when you did something to keep your mind off your most worstest fear...

In the summer of 1963, nine-year-old Starla Claudelle runs away from her strict grandmother's Mississippi home. Starla's destination is Nashville, where her mother went to become a famous singer, abandoning Starla when she was three. Walking a lonely country road, Starla accepts a ride from Eula, a black woman traveling alone with a white baby. Now, on the road trip that will change her life forever, Starla sees for the first time life as it really is--as she reaches for a dream of how it could one day be.

Review Quotes

"A coming-of-age story as well as a luminous portrait of courage and the bonds of friendship. . . Susan Crandall tells young Starla's story with pitch-perfect tone, evoking 1963 Mississippi and its struggles with a deft hand. I laughed and cried at Starla's keen observances of life and family and the sometimes blurred edges of justice. Like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Kathryn Stockett's The Help, Whistling Past the Graveyard is destined to become a classic."--New York Times bestselling author Karen White

"Crandall delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old...Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story."--Kirkus

"Starla's fiery independence makes her a likable narrator."-- "Publishers Weekly"

It's not easy to keep such a young narrator convincing for more than 300 pages... Readers will take to Starla and be caught up in her story.--Mary Ellen Quinn "Booklist"