La Crescent Community Read: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

Join us for a La Crescent Community Read featuring Minnesota author Junauda Petrus's "The Stars and the Blackness Between Them." Copies of the book are available for checkout at the library desk OR digitally via the Libby app.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is despondent, having just found out she’s going to be sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor’s daughter. Audre’s grandmother Queenie (a former dancer who drives a white convertible Cadillac and who has a few secrets of her own) tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won’t lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. “America have dey spirits too, believe me,” she tells Audre.

Minneapolis. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels–about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that’s plagued her all summer. Mabel’s reverie is cut short when her father announces that his best friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner.

Mabel quickly falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But their romance takes a turn when test results reveal exactly why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer and suddenly it’s Audre who is caring for Mabel as she faces a deeply uncertain future.

This community read is sponsored by Southeastern Libraries Cooperating and the MN Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

You may also like the following events from La Crescent Public Library:

• This Saturday, 21st June, 10:30 am, Storytime in La Crescent
• This Saturday, 21st June, 11:00 am, Makerspace in La Crescent
• Next Tuesday, 24th June, 04:15 pm, Storytime in La Crescent

Also check out other Arts events in La Crescent, Literary Art events in La Crescent.