The Earth Breaks In Colors [Paperback]

A racially fueled incident exposes the fissures that sit beneath the surface of friendships and families, triggering significantly more damage than the earthquake that separates them. Whisper and Odelia are eleven-year-old girls who find refuge in the quiet corner of innocent friendship. Their Southern California homes each play host to an undercurrent of secrets. For Whisper that means a fractured mother returning from rehab, for Odelia a brother whose absence is laced with mystery. Race had no real place in the playful friendship of the white Whisper and the black Odelia until a terrifying encounter brings prejudice to the forefront of their lives, opening their young hearts to ill-begotten emotion. A violent earthquake further tears the world as they know it apart. Can hope and innocence be restored? An heirloom timepiece, a curious old woman and an unlikely hero join the girls as they search for their families and understanding among the rubble. A powerful story of race and redemption by novelist Patti Davis. Like many writers, I am never sure where stories come from, says author Patti Davis. They seem to arrive and ask to be told. That was particularly true with The Earth Breaks in Colors. I am intrigued by the innocence of children who pay little mind to skin color, so a friendship between two girls -- one white, one black -- was a world I wanted to visit. And families with secrets is a world that often visits me as a writer. There is a whole genre of literature in which the innocence of childhood is touched by the realities of the grown-up world - Carson McCullers' the Member of the Wedding, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye come to mind. Patti Davis - in a language that falls beguilingly on the reader's ear like a perfect whisper yet does so in a writer's voice that is both robust and tender - tells us her version of this age-old story and makes it young again. - Kevin Sessums, Mississippi Sissy and I Left it On the ls*