As the Lily Among the Thorns

Summaryas The Lily Among The Thorns Simply Put Is About An Eleven Year Old Girl Leigh Anne Bohannon Who Although Born In The Deep South In The State Of Mississippi With Its Age-Old Code Of Southern Honor And Etiquette Thinks With A Mind Of Her Own. She Is A Nonconformist In Her Own Words A Rebel. To Put It Bluntly This Southern Girl Was Born With Balls. She Has A Rare And Treasured Mind; She Has Her Own Opinions Having Little Regard As To The Whims Of Society As She Sees It Or Of Proper Southern Etiquette.She Becomes Best Friends With A Little Black Girl Jenny Pearl Reynolds Who Is Exactly The Same Age As She.The First Part Of The Book (Of A Little Over Three Hundred Pages) Sets The Scenario In Mississippi In Nineteen Hundred And Sixty Three Gives A Description Of Leigh Anne'S World The World Of The Deep South As Well As An Introduction To Her Gentle And Hard Working Family Daddy Bo Her Father A Wise And Gentle Man Who Uses Humor As He Teaches His Family The Hard Lessons Of Life Lillian Her Atlanta Georgia Born College Educated Mother Grandmother Who Is Constantly Relating Bloody Handed Down Accounts Of The Civil War Monica Leigh Anne'S Beautiful Sixteen Year Old Sister Who Is A Dainty Lady-Like Carbon Copy Of Lillian But Without The Kindness Or Gentleness Ben Ray The Younger Bohannon Son Leigh Anne'S Uncle A Tobacco Chewing Good Ole Boy Who Takes Over The Book With His Ruggedly Cute Personality.Leigh Anne Meets Jenny Pearl At An Old Country Store Martins And They As Soon As They Realize They Have The Exact Same Birthday Become Friends Forever. The Reader As Well As Leigh Anne Gets To Know The Reynolds Family Gentle Reynolds Jenny'S Father Who Received His Name From His Disposition Lottie Mae The Mother Who Gave Birth To Her Only Child In Her Middle Years Her Change Of Life Baby Jenny Pearl Whom The Parents Dote On. Jenny Pearl'S Parents Regale Leigh Anne And The Reader With Colored Stories And Of Negro Life In The Deep South Past And Present.As The Lily Among The Thorns Is Real And Believable And Opens The Readers Mind And Heart As He Too Lives Life Through A Southern White Family And Also Through A Southern Black Family. The Reader Is Thinking And Even Speaking In The Southern Redneck Vernacular Black And White.As The Book Unravels It Soon Reveals That The Deep South Is On The Brink Of Desegregation. The Formally Slow Moving Slow Talking World Is Suddenly Stirred Up Like A Hornet'S Nest As Its Beloved World Is Intruded Upon By A Fast Moving Fast Changing World That Is In Direct Opposition To The Old South.Students In Leigh Anne'S School Learn This Unheard Of Yankee Notion And The Book Records The Clashing Of These Two Worlds As The Students Try To Inhale The Idea That Desegregation Is Snowballing Their Way And The Reader Sees The Reverberating Chaos Of These Two Worlds. The Ku Klux Klan Plays A Pivotal Part In This New World As Does Leigh Anne And Jenny Pearl And They Are Eventually Entangled In The Murderous Mess Of Both Worlds!Leigh Anne And Eventually Jenny Pearl Lives To Go Ramblin' Or Adventurin'. The Girls Antagonize Or Spook The Ku Klux Klan Into Burning Crosses In Both Their Yards.But Whoa! First Leigh Anne And Eventually Her Black Buddy Jenny Contend With An Enemy An Ever Present Enemy In The Form Of A Flabby Yellow-Eyed Sixteen Year Old Low-Life John Marshall Davis. He Torments Leigh Anne And Jenny Pearl At Any And Every Opportunity. The Shy Black Girl As Well As The Confrontational White Girl Are Afraid Of Him And Who Wouldn'T Be Afraid Of Ignorance And Cruelty In The Crassest Form? But Leigh Anne Eventually Stands Up To Her Tormentor And This Verbal Battle Becomes Physical And Culminates Into An Actual Life Threatening Beating Thus Bringing To Pass The First Climax Of The Book.As The Girls Travel The Highway Of Life Their Adventurin' Leads To Sneakin' Up On An Actual Clandestine Nocturnal Klan Meeting And As They Come Across Cold Hard Murder They Find That Their Very Lives Are In Mortal Danger. A Large Scale Fbi Hunt Becomes Involved.Several Climaxes Take Place As Well As The Central Climax.To Learn How They Escape From This Entanglement Is A Sit-On-The-Edge-Of-Your-Chair Page Turner.The Entire Book Is An Awakening Of The Senses As Well As A Fresh Distraction From The Daily Cares Of The Reader.The Remaining Pivotal Characters The Bad Guys Of The Kkk Boots Smith A.J. Davis Cotten Mill Lowery And The Fence-Sitter Jabber Landrum Realistically Spring To Life.The Reader Is Most Pleasantly Surprised And Delighted To Learn That In This Book There Are No Dull As Sawdust Pages As A Multitude Of Emotions Emerge; Humor Fear Horror Greed Bigotry Hatred And Honor As Well As A Host Of Emotions In Between.Every Page Is Like Gazing Through A Picture Window And Being Amazed Taking In Southern Life With All Its Southern Humor Black And White As Well As Its Deadly Chameleon-Like Opposite Nature.Leigh Anne Goes Fox Hunting And Wild Turkey Hunting With Her Father And Ben Ray And Fishing With Grandmother. She As Well As The Reader Peeks Into Bits Of Civil War History Southern Style As Her Grandmother Recalls True Accounts Of This Bloody Brother-Against-Brother War That Was Fought On Southern Soil. She Even Quotes As She And Leigh Anne Fish Information That Was Hollered Back And Forth Between The Lines Of Union And Confederate Soldiers As They Briefly Rested Between Battles.The Reader Experiences An Urgent Longing To See The Remainder And Final Climax And Poignant Final Few Pages As Leigh Anne And Jenny Pearl Learn The Hard Lesson Of Real Life.The Tale Is To Be Remembered For The Rest Of Your Life While Being Royally Entertained And Longing To Hear And See More Of These Unforgettable Characters.