In 1927 stonemason Zoli Mednick is chosen to carve a tombstone for a prominent North Texan. He moves his family from the community of Westland in Central Texas, where almost everyone is Czech and Catholic, to Castle Falls, where Czechs are outsiders and everyone attends the Baptist and Methodist churches. Fifteen-year-old Sari Mednick’s biggest concern is making friends—she wants to be as popular in her new school as she was in Westland.
But even as she faces prejudice and snobbery and yearns for Westland and her friends there—including that special young man—Sari is drawn into much more serious problems than the lack of popularity. Her younger brother Georgi is acting strangely and running with a bad crowd of older boys, and there are rumors about the Ku Klux Klan and their hatred for not only blacks but also all Slavs and Jews.
When the Klan makes itself known with beatings and fires, Sari learns a lesson in courage . . . and the town of Castle Falls takes another look at itself and its attitudes.
A captivating novel that vividly presents the misunderstandings and blind hatred that gave rise to violence in Texas in the 1920s.
Catherine Gonzalez is a native of Rhome, Texas, and a descendant of the town founders. A retired school-teacher, she is the author of young-adult biographies of Cynthia Ann Parker, Jane Long, and Jean Lafitte, as well as a history of Rhome.
