Looking back, I can see that I've recently read two books that I felt like I shouldn't have been reading, and yet, I kept reading them! I'll have to stop that. Now, however, I'm reading an awesome book that I highly recommend to any- and everyone.

Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn is a book I found at Half-Price Books several months ago and snatched up because I had read it years ago and loved it. Fortunately, although it was published in 1966, it remains a great book, full of richly drawn characters, historical truths, and a compelling story line. It's often referred to as a romance, and there is a great romance that is part of the book, but it' s also so much more. It centers around a young Black man from New Orleans, who is blessed to receive a scholarship to attend a college "up north" and how that effects and changes his life. When I first read this in high school, it made me want to be black. Seriously. I remember how envious I was of the warmth and depth of tradition and love this young man grew up with, and it made me feel that I had missed out, somehow. When I voiced these thoughts to my mother, I remember she tried to reassure me that our WASP-y heritage and traditions were just as rich and meaningful as anyone else's. And she might have convinced me had she not mentioned the "Virginia Reel" as one of white America's great cultural contributions to the world. The Virginia Reel???

It occurs to me now that she was probably just at a loss for what to say to me. Who knows, I may have even been in tears at the time. And what do I know about the Virginia Reel?

This book may not resonate with some as it has (again) with me, but I still recommend it, especially to younger whites, whose knowledge of a segregated South might be even sketchier than my own. If nothing else, the writing is beautiful and evokes images both stirring and awful. The first time I read it I remember feeling ashamed that members of my own race perpetrated such a way of life, even in such recent times. Now I read it and know that is its Sin. Black or White, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic, we're all broken people, living in a fallen world, ruled by Sin. So I grieve for the sufferings of people like the characters in this book, but as a child of God, rather than a child of a White man.