Blog Tour: The Outskirts of Hope by Jo Ivester (Melissa’s review)

The Outskirts of Hope
written by Jo Ivester
published by She Writes Press, 2015

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange  for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: It’s interesting. It’s not the sort of book you read more than once, but then, I don’t think most memoirs are. I love the perspective shifts between Jo and her mother–they prompted me to chat with my mom about differences in our own shared memories. I hate that the civil rights movement even had to take place, but Jo’s story is proof that slow as it may be, we’re still moving toward becoming better humans.

Would I recommend it: It’s a great read. Go for it.

About the book – from Goodreads: In 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivester s father but her mother a stay-at-home mother of three who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the South who made the most enduring mark on the town. In The Outskirts of Hope, Ivester uses journals left by her mother, as well as writings of her own, to paint a vivid, moving, and inspiring portrait of her family s experiences living and working in an all-black town during the heights of the civil rights movement.”