The Help by Kathryn Stockett

*** Courtesy the Author


Synopsis

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.

My Review Comments:

I was so excited to receive a copy of this book to review and it didn’t disappoint me in any expect of the storyline. I absolutely loved this book, and the movie that was produced after it was even better. It stayed close to the original story line and it made the characters come alive from the pages to the movie screen. You will laugh and cry and have a better understanding of the lines that divided whites and blacks in the deep heart of Mississippi. You will also, have a better understanding of the roles that the black maids took over as surrogate Moms for their white employers children. The deep-rooted connection that was established carried over into adulthood with the children that they raised. Unfortunately, that message was lost on many of them. They became the complete opposite of what they had been taught by their much beloved Nannies and they eventually turned on them as their Mothers did and treated them quiet poorly. What I found so incredible about this book was the very last page, which explains why the author was inspired to write it. I don’t want to give too much away, but it explains volumes about why she wrote this story.