Diane P. (KentuckyReader) - reviewed on 5/22/2009 + 37 more book reviews

This book caught my attention immediately and wouldnt turn me loose till the last page. The characters will make you smile and may even shock you. They are moving, vivid, real people who struggle through life the best they know how. I recommend this book as a very good read,

The year was 1940 in Bigelow, Arkansas. Bigelow was still trapped by the ugliness of segregation. Neither the towns white residents nor their sheriff concerned themselves with the tragic murder of Jude, a young black girl. Jude was the only daughter of Pearl and Joe. Life, as Pearl knew it, stopped for her that day, leaving her dead inside for the next fifteen years.

1955 was the year that Sugar Lacey stepped off the train at Bigelow. Sugar was tall, dark and lovely. She walked with a strut in her step, her longs legs showing off the short tight dress and red spiked heels. Her eyes hidden behind cats-eye-shaped sunglasses and a long blonde wig on her head that bounced every time she took a step. Sugar walked through the town to her new home at 10 Grover Street knowing the women watched her walk, with their arms folded defiantly across their breasts or fisted angrily on their hips. The women hated her and the men wanted her.

All the women except Pearl, who thought Sugar resembles Jude with an eerie similarity. The two women bonded, the older church going Pearl and Sugar; a women who sold her body, a beautiful, uninhibited spirit. Pearl shocks the town as she begins to live again but as time passes we discover long buried secrets that could destroy lives,

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