The Dry Grass of August

Mayhew's debut novel, set in the 1950s, moves back and forth between a family Christmas in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the summer when the family goes to Florida on vacation, taking with them their "girl," Mary. Thirteen-year-old Jubie tells this coming-of-age story, which endeavors to hit as many hot-button issues as possible--from racism and child abuse to adultery and sibling rivalry. Although there's a powerful story in here, it's diluted by too many issues and characters. Karen White's delivery is adequate but doesn't add breadth to the one-dimensional characters. Her pacing is disconcerting, especially when her delivery blurs the lines between speakers and when the story moves from Charlotte to Florida and back again. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

January 10, 2011
A girl comes of age in the tumultuous 1950s South in Mayhew's strong debut. When 13-year-old Jubie Watts goes on a Florida vacation with her family in 1954, Mary, the family's black maid who's closer to Jubie than her own mother, comes along, and though the family lives in North Carolina, Jubie notices the changing way Mary's received the further south they travel. After a tragedy befalls the family, Jubie's eyes are opened to the harsh realities of racism and the importance for standing up for one's beliefs—though this does little to help her when her father's failures in business and marriage lead to the family falling apart. In Jubie, Mayhew gives readers a compelling and insightful protagonist, balancing Jubie's adolescence with a racially charged plot and other developments that are beyond her years. Despite a crush of perhaps unwarranted late-book suffering, Mayhew keeps the story taut, thoughtful, and complex, elevating it from the throng of coming-of-age books.

April 1, 2012

Mayhew's debut novel is set in the segregated South of the 1950s and revolves around a white family with a black domestic. The plot is as leisurely as only the heat of the South in summer can be and is equally taut as tensions build toward a horrific moment. Narrator Karen White channels Scout from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, with the voice of the preteenager looking back and inward. Jubie, unlike Scout, also must struggle with the dangers within her family. The author brings an honesty to this troubled time in a single piece of dialog between two of the sisters speaking about their "girl"--the 47-year-old maid, Mary. "She liked us...she was paid to like us." VERDICT Comparisons to Kathryn Stockett's The Help and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees are inevitable, considering the place, the time, and the cast of characters. Recommended for readers of historical Southern novels.--J. Sara Paulk, Wythe-Grayson Regional Lib., Independence, VA

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