Sweeping Up Glass

OLIVIA Walker grew up in Depression-era Kentucky, in a segregated community where a shopkeeper couldn’t sell an ice-cream to a black child if there was a white person nearby. The white people don’t figure in Olivia’s life; it’s her black neighbours who become this lonely child’s friends; their parents her guardian angels. As the headstrong child of an adored father, but a disturbed, selfish, and vindictive mother, Olivia is left to her own devices.

When she needs to learn about the birds and the bees, the local white teacher refuses to explain, so she climbs the hill to the coloured school-house, where the black schoolmarm explains how things work. Her father is always there, a benign presence who struggles to maintain the failing family store, while on the sideline selling alcohol manufactured at an illegal still and acting as the community’s unofficial vet.