David L. Dudley
Author
Description
In training to be a scribe like his father, thirteen-year-old Joel longs for a different life. He is an artist, but drawing is not allowed in Israel. Like King Solomon, Joel understands the languages of animals, but few believe in such a power or understand its value. How can he find a life that will allow him to be himself and still find a place in his world, ancient Jerusalem?
Jerusalem: a city without cats--impossible? Yet such is the case. Wise...
2) Cy in Chains
Author
Description
Cy Williams, thirteen, has always known that he and the other black folks on Strong's plantation have to obey white men, no question. Sure, he's free, as black people have been since his grandfather's day, but in rural Georgia, that means they're free to be whipped, abused, even killed. Almost four years later, Cy yearns for that freedom, such as it was. Now he's a chain gang laborer, forced to do backbreaking work, penned in and shackled like an...
3) Asher's Eye
Author
Description
Asher, a young Israelite, lives exiled in ancient Babylon. Born with one eye brown and the other blue, he has endured a lifetime of mockery and rejection. No wonder he despises YAH, the god of Israel, for being too weak to save his people from disaster. Asher becomes houseboy to a wealthy Babylonian lady, who tempts him to adopt the faith and culture of his oppressors. He is present when his uncle, the prophet Ezekiel, receives a vision of YAH, commanding...
4) Caleb's Wars
Author
Description
A powerful novel about growing up black on the World War II home front in the Jim Crow South. Caleb lives in a world at war. War news is on everyone's mind, and Caleb's older brother, Randall, is likely to be sent overseas. The presence of German POWs in Caleb's rural Georgia community is a constant reminder of what's happening in Europe. Locked in a power struggle with his domineering father and fighting to keep both his temper and his self-respect...