Just Jennifer

The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin (Harper Perennial, April 27, 2010)

Millwood, Mississippi in 1963 is, like most Southern towns of this time, a segregated town and eleven-year-old Florence Forrest is trying to make sense of all she sees around her.  Her father, after a series of unsuccessful jobs, is selling burial insurance, and is very active in community groups, something of which Florence is very proud, though she doesn’t realize most of his activism is as a member of the Klan.  Florence’s mother Martha realizes she did not choose wisely when she married and has struggled to make ends meet, baking cakes to sell to the local ladies, and spending her nights visiting a moonshine operation to get her through life.  Martha’s mother Mimi is well-to-do and thinks she treats her black maid, Zenie (named for Zenobia, the queen of ancient Palmyra) very well, paying her $10 a week (rounded up from $9.75) and offering Zenie her cast-off hats.  When Zenie’s niece Eva Greene arrives for the summer in Millwood to sell burial insurance, raising her last year’s tuition for college, a series of events is triggered off that changes Florence’s life, even though she can’t understand what has happened, until many years later when she is able to make her own choices and choose her own fate.  A wonderful first novel that depicts the American South at a pivotal time in history and the effects it has on a young girl at a pivotal time in her life