Blackberries and Cream

Have you ever had the feeling you weren’t loved by the momma God gave you?  Lucky for Gracie, she has two mommas.  One cares for her every day while the other goes off to work.  One is happy, strong and free while the other is sad, dark and depressed.  One is black.  The other is white.  One Gracie must leave.

Grace Callaway lives down deep in Alabama during a turbulent time of protests, boycotts, and sit-ins.  It is a segregated world where black and white won’t mix.  But don’t tell that to Ida Bell and Grace.

Ida Bell has been Gracie's nanny since the day she came home from the hospital in a shoebox.  They love each other like a real mother and daughter.  Even way more.  But the summer Grace turns ten, her white momma decides they need to move away.

Moving means just one thing:  leaving Ida Bel

Leslie Rivver of Irasburg, Vermont

Leslie Rivver grew up in the Deep Alabama South. She ventured up the east coast for college and graduate school, spent close to a decade teaching children on the Arctic shores of Alaska, and now lives on a wild and cold mountain in Vermont.