A sequel to the universally acclaimed Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, continuing in the story of the Logan family in Mississippi during the Depression. The children, especially Cassie, are happy in their warm, stable family but outside is a climate of fear and tension. Their friend T.J. goes on trial for murder and stands before an all-white jury. Cousin Suzella tries to pass for white, with humiliating consequences. And when Cassie’s neighbour stands up for her right to vote she and her cousin are driven from their home. Cassie is realising what it means to grow up black and powerless, but her family stand together, proving that courage, love and understanding can defy even the deepest prejudices.
QUOTES FROM LET THE CIRCLE BE…
“Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. “Maybe she done changed,” he said hopefully on the first day of school. However, when classes were over he was noticeably quiet.
Well?” I asked him.
He shrugged dejectedly and admitted, “She still the same.”
“Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.”