Thorpe

from the book

In a dramatic novel that weaves a spell of enchantment, Mary Dutton skillfully blends humor, pathos, and violence. For Thorpe, the six-year-old protagonist, it all begins innocently enough. On the surface, Thorpe's family is living an idyllic rural existence — her father, Jim Torrance, is the highly respected principal of the local high school. But he is also a liberal and a friend of the Negro. Through the latter "failing," and it couldn't be considered anything else in the South of 1935, he loses his job. Venie, Thorpe's mother, though generous and basically warmhearted, is uncomprehending and totally unsympathetic toward Jim's actions. As a Southerner who is the victim of her own prejudices and who cannot free herself of a venomous older sister's domination, she fights a losing battle to keep things the way they always have been.

Not really understanding the crosscurrent in which she is caught, Thorpe lives in two worlds — one filled with love; the other with hate and ugliness. Her devotion to her best friend, Thee, the son of her mother's colored laundress, is juxtaposed against her view of Billy Bob, the son of a local pillar of respectability, who is a sadist and also, in fact, a rapist responsible for impregnating a young Negro girl.