One of the disappointing losses with the cancelling of the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival was the visit by this year’s USM Medallion award winner for her body of work, Rita Williams-Garcia. Rita came to the festival several years ago, and by happy chance, she, her husband, and K. T. Horning, the director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, were my lunch table partners the first day. That lively conversation left me wanting more, so for that reason alone, I couldn’t wait for Rita’s return.
Before her visit that year to the festival, I had read the first two of her books in a trilogy, One Crazy Summer and P. S. Be Eleven. The first takes Delphine and her two sisters to spend the summer with their poet mother, who had abandoned them, in Oakland where she exposes them to the Black Panthers and other activists. The second book finds them back at home in Brooklyn dealing with a father who has a new girl friend, an uncle back and damaged from his stint in Vietnam, and their grandmother Big Ma who is opposed to all the change going on. Not every author can pull off a sequel as strong as their initial title, but I found both to be equally compelling. I knew I needed to read the third before the festival.
Gone Crazy in Alabama finds the Gaither sisters on a trip to spend the summer in Alabama where Big Ma has returned to live with their great-grandmother Ma Charles. Delphine still fills the role of mother to the younger sisters vacated when their mother left them, defending the youngest Fern and locking horns with the middle sister Vonetta. Their squabbles mirror the ones between Ma Charles and her half sister Miss Trotter. Their summer educates them in farm living, family history, and navigation of Southern traditions. It takes the aftereffects of a tornado to waken both sets of sisters to their importance to each other.
I mourn the lack of the festival and the fact that I won’t get to spend time with this author whose personality reflects the warmth of her stories. However, I have loved the time I’ve spent in the presence of Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern and recommend the trilogy with the last book as good as the first and second. Lest you question my judgment, I will add that all three were recipients of the Coretta Scott King award from the American Library Association and remember that Rita was scheduled to receive the USM award for her body of work.