The Help by Kathryn Stockett

This was another book that after I finished the sample, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to continue with. I went ahead and kept reading (mostly because it drives me nuts to stop in the middle of a book) and ended up really loving this book.

The book switches around three women's perspectives in Jackson, MI in the 1960s and ostensibly tells the story of black maids working in white homes during this time period.

One of the women is Abileene who in her mid-late 50's has raised 17 white children and had her only natural son die when his white boss wouldn't take him to the hospital after an accident at work. Abileene was the perfect mother figure: caring and wise, smart and loving but she always felt she had to keep her emotions out of her job or it would just be too much. She says after her son dies though, that wall just drops and the anger that she has to keep hidden starts to make her care more than she ever has before.

The second woman is Mimmy - a smart-mouthed maid with five children and an abusive, alcoholic husband. Mimmy is constantly being fired for talking a back and through the "Terrible. Awful." she managed to make an enemy out of the town white she-satan (Hilly). Mimmy is the relief character because she manages to say just what the reader wants to yell and its nice to know that her type exist because she is such an agent of change.

The third is a white woman, Skeeter (real name Eugenia). Skeeter was BFFs with Hilly and Abileene's boss, Elizabeth, growing up but at a time when racial tensions are coming to a head - she begins to see the unequal world around her and really see her friends for who they are.

I liked this book because it was the three women coming to together to tell the stories of these maids and including the good and the bad of all the relationships - they didn't harp on the evils or make it sappy and all alright.

A quote the author (and I) really liked was "Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."