Today marks the paperback release of A Thousand Never Evers (Yearling, 2009)! I’m so excited to report that the Interactive Reader Guide is up and running on my site as well. Please check it out!

The Interactive Reader Guide features chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, links to 1963 newspaper articles, and riveting video interviews with people who lived through civil rights history. There are also many current-day  photographs of the Mississippi Delta.

I designed the guide especially for educators using the book in the classroom or anyone leading a book club discussion about A Thousand Never Evers. You can access it through the Home page or Educator page of my website. If you want to go straight to the video interviews, click on “All Video Clips” at the bottom of the table of contents. Enjoy!

I just got a copy of the Yearling paperback edition of A Thousand Never Evers in the mail. I love this new cover!

Yearling paperback release date is December 22nd!

Now I’m furiously working to get a comprehensive and interactive reader guide up on my website by the new year.

The reader guide will also feature chapter by chapter discussion questions and important weblinks. The guide is designed so teachers either can use it in class, or assign sections for nightly homework if all students have internet access outside the classroom. Also, anyone leading a book club discussion will find a lot to yap about. Please check back at the start of 2010 to check it out!

This summer when my husband and I were in the Mississippi Delta, we wandered into the Greyhound Bus Station in Greenwood. Well, talk about about a busload of history! Surprise, surprise. It’s not actually an operating station anymore, but it’s been restored to preserve the past. Check out Oren’s blog post here.

I love hearing from readers! Last week I got an interesting email from a woman named Muriel who lived in Alabama in the 1960s. With Muriel’s permission, I’m sharing her letter:

Dear Shana,

I wanted to write and tell you how much I enjoyed your book. I found it
on the library shelf while waiting for my two precious granddaughters to
find books to read this past summer.

I was drawn to the book because we lived in Birmingham, Alabama while my husband was at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, College of Medicine for 5 years. We lived there from 1960 to 1965 during the civil rights movement.

We were in our church that dreadful Sunday morning when the 4 little
girls were killed in the bombing. We were one block away when that bomb
exploded. It rattled our church windows and caused fear in all of our
hearts. I gave birth to our second child on October 6th, 1963, 3 weeks
after the bombing. Six weeks later our president, John F. Kennedy was
assassinated. It was a very sad time in the history of our country!

I lived in New Jersey till I married so was not familiar with the laws
and rules of the South. I went to school with many African American
friends and thought nothing about it till I moved to Alabama and saw how
different things were there.

Thanks again for telling us about the “other side” of the story and
letting us have a taste of what they went through during those very
difficult years.

Sincerely,

Muriel

It was almost randomly that we ended up spending our first night in Vicksburg, Mississippi. My husband has a colleague from there, and it’s less than an hour’s drive from the airport, so we decided to give it a try.

We drove into this city by the Mississippi River with no idea of what to expect. We followed the directions in our guidebook to The Cedar Grove Mansion Inn by route of one of the main roads through town. We passed a majestic brick building that said “The Vicksburg” in white letters down the side.

The Mississippi River ran along our left side, and on it, a giant Mississippi river boat turned gambling palace. (It wasn’t until the next morning that we realized it was actually planted on land; it just looked like it was in the water from the road up above.)

On our way to the Inn, we saw that many shops in town were boarded up, out of business, trashed. This scene would be repeated over and over as we drove through the state. I’ve been to Mississippi before, but the poverty is overwhelming each and every time. And especially in a city with such a majestic framework like Vicksburg.

The Cedar Grove Mansion Inn is enormous. The plantation grounds are lush and gorgeous. We sure enjoyed the fried green tomatoes in the restaurant there! And it was quite a sight to see the floorboards still split in the parlor from a cannon that was fired during the civil war. In fact, the mansion was turned into a Union hospital during the war.

I’m sure it costs a fortune to keep up a place as grand as this one, and it looked as if the economy has taken a toll. The rooms were almost beautiful. The restaurant was almost great. The tennis courts were in disrepair and the pool needed a deep cleaning. In fact, throughout Vicksburg and throughout the state, we found a haunting juxtaposition of elegance and despair.

The next day we wandered down the main drag of Vicksburg, where we experienced the real charm and character of the city firsthand.