Little Sacrifices by Jamie Scott

How much would you risk to stand up for your beliefs?

When Duncan and Sarah Powell move with their daughter, May, to Savannah Georgia in 1947, they hope against hope that they’ll be welcomed. But they’re Yankees and worse, they’re civil rights advocates almost a decade too early.

At first May can pretend they’re the same as everyone else. It means keeping quiet when she knows she should speak up, but it’s worth the sacrifice to win friends. Unfortunately her parents are soon putting their beliefs into action. And when they wake to find that they’re the only family on the block with a Ku Klux Klan cross blazing on their front lawn, the time comes for them to finally decide between what’s easy and what’s right

This story did take me a little bit longer than usual to get into. I was not exactly sure which direction the author was going to take the story. At first I was expecting a drama filled story of an unhappy teenager, running away from home and possibly getting caught up with an older man. But after the bus ride scene and the conversation that she had I was warming up to the idea of it being more like a historical coming of age story.

When May's family moves into the new house she soon discovers a journal that's been hidden of a woman who lived in the house around 1912. And we get alternating chapters between her story and May who is living there in the 1940's.

As the book takes place in Savannah, Georgia. It's told from two very different and evolving times in American History. With a huge focus on civil rights, the Ku Klux Klan and segregation in the South.

May's family moves from the North to Georgia. Which during this time period in our history had huge differences in the interactions between the races. The historical details that went into the novel were noticeably researched and greatly detailed. You can tell that there was a lot of time that went into writing the story.

With the weaving of the stories between the journal and the current time it was a nice change to go back and forth between times. Like most others have mentioned in their reviews, it's really the epilogue that pulls the story together nicely. It was a heavy (emotional) story and a great read. I ended up really loving the main character and her family.