Book Report: The Help

Some books are just so good you have to stay up reading until 2:00am - on a work night! - to find out what happens next. I can't even remember the last time I did that (Nancy Drew in 5th grade?)!

The Help by Kathyrn Stockett just happens to be one of those page-turners, but not in the creepy murder-mystery sort of way.

It tells the stories of three women living in Jackson, Mississipi, during the 1960s and the rise of the civil rights movement. Stockett beautifully weaves together the stories of three women: Aibileen, an African-American servant helping to raise her seventeenth white child; Minny, another servant and Aibileen's best friend who has often been fired because of her sass-mouthing; and Skeeter, the daughter of a wealthy white cotton farmer who is torn between her Junior League friends and her desire to become a journalist. Each tells the story in her own unique voice, each chapter more beautiful than the last. And although Help uncovers some very unsavory parts of American history, it ends with a hopeful outlook for the future - a future which I think has come to pass in many ways, but towards which we still have quite the journey ahead of us.

If you are in search of a great read, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. You will laugh. You will cry. You will swoon. You will swear. You will stare at the page with gaping mouth. Have I convinced you to go out and buy a copy yet?

If you're not on your way to the bookstore by now, GET MOVING! You won't regret it.