Betsey Brown Book

A quick, light read, enjoyable in part because of its St. Louis setting, this book can be seen as a combination of Gail Milissa Grant's At the Elbows of My Elders and its depiction of black middle class family life in St. Louis, as well as, surprisingly, Mary Poppins. Over the course of the novel's 15 chapters, the Brown family experiences run-ins with racist police, the trials of early school integration, marital strife, and coming-of-age experiences like first kisses'but one of the running plot lines is the search for a suitable housekeeper/nanny. When Betsey's mother leaves the family for a time, the Browns find Carrie, a big down-home woman who ties her dresses with a thick rope, carries on a romance with the neighborhood gardener, is incredibly effective while never seeming to hurry and even taking liberal nips of wine during the workday, and will use only the latrine in the cellar "cause that's what her mama had in Arkansas." Her ways are often an affront to Betsy's more siditty mother and grandmother, and ultimately she is fired after having spent the night in jail after being involved in a violent altercation. A far cry from Mary Poppins's demure floating away while holding her umbrella'yet Carrie makes a lasting impact on Betsey as she looks ahead to adult life.