Yeah, yeah, every author is "beloved," but NO, George Ella really IS! You should have seen her last week-end at the Kentucky Book Fair. Fans were all over her! She has written scores of kids picture books, several youth novels, and some poetry books, but this is really her one and only trade novel. The protagonist is fifteen-year-old Lawanda, a caring, poverty-stricken, precocious youth who is misunderstood for befriending an old alcoholic veteran.
"Lyon gives readers a story rich in precise, gorgeous language that glows like a sword on the forge and cuts as deep."-- Booklist (starred review). George Ella Lyon grew up in Harlan, Kentucky, and earned a PhD with a dissertation on Virginia Woolf. She has now lived in Lexington, Kentucky, most of her life. She is not only a writer, but a singer, and an activist for progressive causes.
New York: DK Publishing, 1997. 213 pages. Hardback in dust jacket.
