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Spring has sprung and with it often comes romance, new life and growth.
So it's appropriate to offer three novels - each different, but all budding with those themes.
"The Sweet Shade of a Chinaberry Tree'' by Janice Ward Parrish (Hard Shell Word Factory, $12.95) is a beautifully written historically based novel about forbidden romance between a young white woman and a black man in Beulah, Ala., in 1963. It's a time and a place when such a relationship - even thought about - could mean death for a black man.
Gaynell McGowan returns to her Beulah home for summer break after a year at a northern college where she has befriended people who share her long-standing opposition to the racial segregation common in her hometown. She meets Willis Jones, a black man from Chicago who's in Beulah to earn a veterinary degree at the local historically black college. Their friendship develops just as a battle is brewing over plans to desegregate Beulah's public schools.
Even though his uncle warns Willis to stay away from Gaynell and Gaynell knows she shouldn't be close friends with a black man, their friendship secretly blossoms.
Parrish mixes real events and real people into this finely written coming-of-age story that is a lesson both in love and in a tragic period of American history.
"Hip-Hop High School'' by Alan Lawrence Sitomer (Jump at the Sun, $16.99) is a touching and captivating trip into an inner-city high school and the lives of students there: the too few destined for success and the too many who'll be trapped by conditions that limit their lives.
The story is told through one of the likely-to-succeeds - Theresa Anderson, a black girl. Her best friend, nicknamed Cee-Saw, becomes pregnant and another friend, a Latina, Sonia, has responsibilities to care for her siblings that limit her chances for success.
Romance blooms between Theresa and a young man named Devon, who's just as determined to succeed as she is, maybe more so.
Together they embark upon a quest to ace college admissions tests. But those plans are almost shot, literally, when Devon takes a bullet in a street fight.
This story moves with the rhythm and passion of the hip-hop music that comforts Theresa.
"Just Listen'' by Sarah Dessen (Viking, $17.99) is the seventh of the top-selling, highly acclaimed books by Dessen, whose writing clearly connects with teen readers.
"Just Listen" is another example of how and why that's so. It focuses on a teen model, Annabel, who at first glance has a picture perfect life and family. But inside her gorgeous house and inside herself, things are falling apart. A sister suffers from an eating disorder and her mother's attention is so focused on that daughter that Annabel's needs and desires are ignored. In fact, sometimes Annabel mothers her mother just to keep peace.
But the major drama revolves around Annabel's relationship with a former best friend who is spreading nasty rumors about her. Into that void comes an unlikely friend, Owen Armstrong, a loner who's heavy into alternative music. Owen guides Annabel to eventually listen to herself, and in so doing she finds strength in being true to herself.
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(c) 2006, Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
