I'll be the first to admit I don't read a lot of historical fiction, but when it sounds compelling and it's only 130 pages, well, I'm there! The esteemed Julius Lester's latest (I say this because this author has written Newbery Honors, won the National Book Award, and much more) offering was at times heartbreaking, infuriating, and painful, but a completely important book. Set in 1946 in a rural southern town, it is the story of a lynching. (FYI, a lynching is when a mob violently punishes someone, outside of the law. Lynchings have been illegal in the United States since 1922.)Beginning as a quiet tale about a Caucasian boy Ansel and his African-American friend Willie, who hang out outside Ansel's father's stores and ponder their future, Guardian weaves you in and out of other happenings in the town on the same day, a day that will change Ansel's life forever. The laconic start to story filled me with dread, knowing that at any point, the whole tone of the book would change. In one dramatic incident, everything does, and the person least likely to commit the crime is accused and punished before everyone's eyes. Some may turn a blind eye, but nobody tries to change the outcome.
It's painful to read about the past, both through this fictionalized past in this brief novel, and in the appended tables at the end, statistics compiled of lynchings in the United States from 1882 to 1968. Only three states in the continental United States have no recorded lynchings, and Illinois is not among them.
* * * * (four out of five stars)
RIYL: Julius Lester's other books, historical fiction, tales set in the deep South
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