Stangers Here Below (2010) by Joyce Hinnefeld

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Strangers Here Below (2010)

by Joyce Hinnefeld

Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Kentucky: 2/16

   Two books in and I can already tell you that Kentucky had a different racial vibe than the deep South.  Take Berea College, which was founded as an interracial institute of higher education in the 19th century. It had to abandon that mission for a half-century when Kentucky made interracial education illegal in 1904 but then went back to being interracial before such a thing was widespread.  This book details the history of that school as seen through the eyes of one white student and one black student and folds in the story of a nearby Shaker colony that was hanging on by virtue of a single resident into the mid 20th century.   Strangers Here Below is a perfect pick for the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project because it is specifically about a specific place on the map, but I also liked the underlying history itself- of which I was unaware.