Spite Fences

Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh has lived in Kinship, Georgia, all her life. In all that time almost nothing has changed. If you are poor, you live on the west side of town. If you are rich, you live on the hill in the north end and get to go boating at the country club in Troy. If you are white you use one bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you are colored you use another. All that starts to change in the summer of 1960. It is the summer when Maggie's younger sister, Gardenia, triumphs in the Hayes County Little Miss Contest. It is the summer when Maggie must decide whether or not to tell anyone about the horrible thing she saw. Most of all it's the summer of Maggie's first camera, a tool that becomes a way for her to find independence and a different kind of truth. __From the Paperback edition.__ Thirteen-year-old Maggie Pugh has lived in Kinship, Georgia, all her life.
In all that time almost nothing has changed. If you are poor, you live on the
west side of town. If you are rich, you live on the hill in the north end and
get to go boating at the country club in Troy. If you are white you use one
bathroom at Byer's Drugs and if you are colored you use another.

All that starts to change in the summer of 1960. It is the summer when Maggie's
younger sister, Gardenia, triumphs in the Hayes County Little Miss Contest. It
is the summer when Maggie must decide whether or not to tell anyone about the
horrible thing she saw. Most of all it's the summer of Maggie's first camera, a
tool that becomes a way for her to find independence and a different kind of
truth.


From the Paperback edition.

As she struggles with her troubled relationship with her mother during the summer of 1960, a young girl is also drawn into the violence, hatred, and racial tension in her small Georgia town.