Francie Weaver, a 12-year-old African American girl, is growing up in Noble, Alabama, in the 1930s with her Mama and her little brother Prez. Her father, a Pullman porter, has been saving up money so that the family can move to Chicago, and as far as Francie’s concerned, it can’t happen soon enough. In the meantime, she bides her time by attending school, helping her Mama with her work as a domestic and, in her rare free moments, reading Nancy Drew novels while sitting on top of her favorite hill, eating Scooter pies. When Jesse, a 16-year-old friend, is wrongly accused of hitting a white man, Francie and Prez put their family and the entire Black community at risk by helping Jesse hide in the woods behind their house. English greatly enriches this compelling first novel with details of a specific time and place, as well as with well-rounded characters who come to life in the context of a close-knit community. Francie is such a likable young girl that when she leaves for Chicago at the book’s conclusion, we are as sorry as her neighbors to say goodbye to her. (Ages 9-13)

A distinctive new voice in children's fiction

Francie lives with her mother and younger brother, Prez, in rural Alabama, where all three work and wait. Francie's father is trying to get settled in Chicago so he can move his family up North.

Unfortunately, he's made promises he hasn't kept, and Francie painfully learns that her dreams of starting junior high school in an integrated urban classroom will go unfulfilled. Amid the day-to-day grind of working odd jobs for wealthy white folks on the other side of town, Francie becomes involved in helping a framed young black man to escape arrest -- a brave gesture, but one that puts the entire black community in danger. In this vivid portrait of a girl in the pre--Civil Rights era South, first-time novelist Karen English completes Francie's world using lively vernacular and a wide array of flesh-and-blood characters.

Francie is a 2000 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book.