Additional books with a similar theme: http://product.half.ebay.com/The-Secret-Life-of-Bees_W0QQtgZdetailsQQprZ66641749 Peonie and Posey Lady.... You can purchase a used paperback copy of your book on half.com http://product.half.ebay.com/The-Queen-of-Palmyra_W0QQprZ74198854QQtgZinfo Summary of "The Queen of Palmyra" follows: "In the turbulent southern summer of 1963, Millwood's white population steers clear of "Shake Rag," the black section of town. Young Florence Forrest is one of the few who crosses the line. The daughter of a burial insurance salesman with dark secrets and the town's "cake lady," whose backcountry bootleg runs lead further and further away from a brutal marriage, Florence attaches herself to her grandparents' longtime maid, Zenie Johnson. Named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, Zenie treats the unwanted girl as just another chore, while telling her stories of the legendary queen's courage and cunning. The more time Florence spends in Shake Rag, the more she recognizes how completely race divides her town, and her story, far from ordinary, bears witness to the truth and brutality of her timesÂa truth brought to a shattering conclusion when Zenie's vibrant college-student niece, Eva Greene, arrives that fateful Mississippi summer. Minrose Gwin's The Queen of Palmyra is an unforgettable evocation of a time and a place in AmericaÂa nuanced, gripping story of race and identity."

I see now I should have heeded my first instinct and not have mentioned "Quills." It is controversial and disturbing, and wasn't meant to be historically accurate. It does, however, represent shifting mores of the time as influenced by intellectual thinkers. I almost didn't recommend it, but did a search for movies and Enlightenment and found Quills on a college syllabus for this period, so I thought maybe it did have some validity afterall. However, sounds like maybe it doesn't. I had conveniently forgotten how disturbing some of it really was. My favorite book from this period is still Voltaire's "Candide". However, that seems to be the obligatory assignment (or at least when I went to college). I think I had to read it at least three times for three different courses. That did not reduce the pleasure of it for me, though. It still ranks as one of my favorite satires.

Thank you Frances and Janalyn! These "senior moments" are killing me! Now I can't even do a proper google search :( I did find in the advanced search mode on audible.com that you can enter a name for narrator, which turned up two Shakespeare plays that she's involved in, so thankyou very much! Now over to the movie forum to find out what films she's appeared in!

Eureka!! I found the information! From an obit. in the Washington Post June 4, 2011 "Harry Bernstein, memoirist who wrote of childhood of deprivation, dies at 101 Harry Bernstein, who caused a literary sensation when he emerged from anonymity in his 90s to write two devastating memoirs that explored his childhood of squalor, abuse and anti-Semitism, died June 3 at his daughter's home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 101. The cause of death was not reported. "The Invisible Wall" drew favorable comparisons to Frank McCourt�s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angela�s Ashes," about that author's hardscrabble upbringing in Ireland. Reviewing "The Invisible Wall" in the New York Times, William Grimes called it "a world of pain and prejudice, evoked in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds." In "The Dream," Mr. Bernstein's follow-up memoir, he traced his family's move to Chicago in 1922. In reviews, critics described Mr. Bernstein as a storyteller of quiet, heartbreaking power. Author Juliet Wittman, writing in The Washington Post, said of "The Dream" that "beneath the poignant descriptions of places and times past, beneath the rising and falling patterns of these characters' lives, we hear at Wordsworth called "the still sad music of humanity." For much of his life, Mr. Bernstein's writing career was steady but unremarkable. He critiqued and summarized manuscripts for film studios in the 1930s and 1940s once giving thumbs down to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as "just another historical romance." Later, he edited trade magazines and continued to publish articles and short stories. In 1981, he wrote a novel, "The Smile," about a fashion model. It received little attention, although he joked that he knew it sold at least one copy because of a letter he received from a reader. When his memoirs were published, Mr. Bernstein faced some skepticism from critics who said he could not possibly recall entire conversations from his childhood. He insisted he did, as they had been seared into his brain with photographic clarity. As much as he tried to forget the past, Mr. Bernstein did not extinguish the burning hatred he said that he felt for his father, who made his mother's harsh life even worse. She died at 65 of malnutrition in an unheated tenement in the Bronx, N.Y. After her funeral, he never saw his father again. "He wept when she died. That's the only good thing I can say about him," Mr. Bernstein told USA Today. He dedicated "The Invisible Wall" to his mother, "who gave us so much and received so little. Can this book make up for it? Can anything?" � The Washington Post Company