Blue Hole Back Home

Written by Joy Jordan-Lake

Narrated by Angela Dawe

In a time when cross burnings and men in white hoods appeared to be a thing of the past, a small town confronts a kind of hate it thought had long since died out….

Shelby Lenoir Maynard, nicknamed Turtle, has never much trusted girls her own age, spending her days instead with her brother and his pack of friends. But when a mysterious Sri Lankan girl of Moorish descent moves to town, Turtle invites her to their secret haven: the Blue Hole. Turtle could not have imagined how much that simple gesture would alter the rest of her life, or the lives of those she loves. As tensions rise, it becomes clear there are those in Pisgah Ridge who reject the presence of anyone different—and those who would welcome the new refugee family. In just one summer—in a collision of love, hate, jealousy, beauty and a muddy swimming hole—everything changes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Mar 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543673920

Joy Jordan-Lake

Joy Jordan-Lake has written more than a half dozen books, including the novel Blue Hole Back Home, which won the Christy Award in 2009 for Best First Novel. The book, which explores racial violence and reconciliation in the post–Civil Rights South, went on to be chosen as the Common Book at several colleges, as well as being a frequent book club pick. Jordan-Lake holds a PhD in English, is a former chaplain at Harvard, and has taught literature and writing at several universities. Her scholarly work Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin draws on the narratives, journals, and letters of enslaved and slaveholding antebellum women, research that led her to the story behind A Tangled Mercy. Living outside of Nashville, she and her husband have three children. To learn more about the author and her work, visit www.joyjordanlake.com.

Reviews for Blue Hole Back Home

[debs4jc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When Shelby and her rag tag group of friends befriend the "new girl" they have no idea what the consequences are going to be. The new girl is from Sri-Lanka, the time is 1979, and the setting is a small town in Appalachia--a town where racial prejudice still runs high. I enjoyed the story well enough but it never really grabbed me, despite the tension of a love triangle between the new girl and two of Shelby's friends and the danger that they find themselves in when the bigots make them a target. A great premise but for some reason--the characters not being well developed enough or the prose not exciting enough--it just felt kind of flat to me. 

[smclawler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Blue Hole Back Home begins in 1979 with five high school friends embarking on their summer vacation just as a Sri Lankan family, who seek a better life in the United States, moves into their small, white, mountain community, which overlooks integrated town in the valley. Although tentative, the teens extend a bit of Southern hospitality toward Sanna, the teen. Ultimately this leads to the realization that it might not be "safe" to befriend their new neighbor, and that some of the their parents, friends, and townspeople might be hypocrites about integration. Racism, which had been dormant for a few years, bubbles to the surface in the form of late night hate crimes, perpetrated by people wearing old sheets. As events rise to a devastating crescendo, the author weaves a tale, which beautifully describes the twists and turns of the mountain hangouts and its inhabitants. I finished it today, January1, 2009, and it will be one of those books that I will still be thinking about at the end of the year.