The bestseller , The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is in high demand with the movie release just a few days away ( August 10!) Try one of these suggested read-alikes while you are moving down the hold list:
The Dry Grass of August - In 1954, 13-year-old Jubie, traveling with her family and her family’s black maid Mary Luther–who has always been there for her, making up for her father’s rages and her mother’s neglect–encounters racial tension and tragedy.
Freshwater Road - Volunteering in the summer of 1964 to help voters to register in the small town of Pineyville, Mississippi, college student Celeste Tyree befriends several locals, learns powerful lessons about race and social change, and is targeted by people who view her as a threatening representation of unwanted change.
Right as Rain - Living and working side-by-side on the rural Southern farm belonging to their white employers, Tee Wee and Icey forge a bond based on their shared servitude and their equally painful pasts.
The Secret Life of Bees - After her “stand-in mother,” a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
We Are All Welcome Here - Stricken by polio, Paige Dunn, a woman of remarkable free spirit, beauty, and intelligence, continues to raise her daughter, Diana, with the help of her caretaker Peacie, in a novel set against the backdrop of Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1964.
The Summer We Got Saved - Embracing the belief systems of her Southern hometown, Tab witnesses changes in the attitudes throughout the course of a 1960s gubernatorial campaign, which is marked by the establishment of a voting school for church members. ( Novelist)
Mudbound - It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband’s Mississippi Delta farma place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family’s struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura’s brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not, charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South.
Four Spirits - In the wake of racial tensions in 1960s Alabama, sheltered white college student Stella participates in her first freedom movement and finds her life changed in several ways when she develops friendships with local African Americans.
