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ANGELS WATCHING OVER ME BY MICHAEL PHILIPS (2002) - NEW
In this first book in the Shenandoah Sisters series, Phillips, a
prolific author and longtime CBA bookseller, offers a light historical
novel with the flavor of young adult fiction. Mary Ann "Mayme" Jukes is
a young African-American slave girl living in Shenandoah County, in
North Carolina, in the 1860s. When marauding outlaw Confederate
soldiers kill her family, she escapes to Rosewood, another plantation
owned by the white family of Kathleen "Katie" Clairborne. Here, Mayme
finds more devastation; 15-year-old Katie is the only person left
alive. The girls become friends and together vow to run the plantation
and keep the adults' deaths a secret until Katie comes of legal age to
own the debt-ridden property. The book is mostly a collection of short,
sketchy scenes, presumably setting up events for the next book in the
series. Phillips's prose is simple and workmanlike, adeptly moving the
events along. The reader is left with a few questions (the plantation
is devastated, yet the girls have plenty of livestock and groceries),
and the spiritual thread is fairly basic (God tells Mayme directly what
to do, and they speak to each other in italics). The epilogue leaves
the reader hanging until the promised second installment. Young
evangelical Christian women looking for escapist historical fiction
will find this passable, if not particularly memorable, entertainment.
Book 1 of SHENANDOAH
SISTERS. Two young Southern girls, one the daughter of a plantation
owner and one the daughter of a slave, barely survive the onset of the
Civil War and the loss of both their families. When these tragic
circumstances bring them together, they join forces to discover if they
can make a life for themselves. As their preconceptions give way to
experience, they gradually learn to value their contrasting and
complementing strengths and skills as they face the formidable task of
keeping body and soul together in the aftermath of this devastating
war. But is it possible the Lord they have come to know has something
bigger in mind for the plantation than either of them can imagine?
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