Morning in a Different Place by Mary Ann McGuigan

Morning in a Different Place by Mary Ann McGuigan is about the friendship between 8th graders Fiona, the daughter of Irish Immigrants, and an African American girl named Yolanda. The story takes place during the early 1960s, during John F. Kennedy's presidency, when African Americans were still struggling for civil rights. Fiona has moved all over New York because of her alcoholic and abusive father. Each time their large family tries to move back in with him, his drinking cycle starts up again, and Fiona's mom ends up getting hurt. As a result, they've had to stay with their cousins in a tiny apartment. Yolanda's mother has moved out of state to start her life over with a new family. Yolanda doesn't want to go with her mother, so she stays with her aunt. Fiona and Yolanda rely on each other during the tough times. That begins to change, however, when some of the popular girls at their school begin "recruiting" Fiona. Fiona wants to be friends with this new group, but still wants to maintain her friendship with Yolanda. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like that's possible. With things going downhill fast with her father, and downhill even faster with Yolanda and the popular girls, suddenly an event happens that shakes the entire country - JFK is assassinated. In the midst of it all, Fiona finds a way to make everything up to Yolanda AND save her broken family.

Click here to listen to author Mary Ann McGuigan reading from Morning in a Different Place

This was a really interesting book! I really liked the way the author told the story of the girls with the historical events as a backdrop. At times, it was easy to forget that the story takes place in the 1960s because the struggles these girls are forced to live through are similar to the struggles people face now - poverty, abuse, alcoholism, racism, bullies, drugs, crime, etc. Below is an excerpt of JFK's speech on civil rights given in 1963. It gives the reader an idea of the tension in the country around race relations during the time in which this book was set.