Circle of Fire

This is the 14th book in the History Mysteries series and is based on a real event, a planned attempt by some KKK members to blow up a school that Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady, was going to make a speech at. This was the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee on June 17, 1958. She had been making speeches in various places against racism, and the KKK members decided they were going to bomb the school where she was speaking. It turned out there was an F.B.I. informant in their midst, though, and the Klan learned that the F.B.I. knew what was being planned so they apparently abandoned their attempt to kill the former First Lady.

Thus, there's a historical underpinning to the events in the story. The two main characters, those of Mendy, a young black girl, and Jeffrey, a young white boy, are fictional, but are used to tell the story of the type of hatred that existed at the time (and still does today, although in lesser numbers). Mendy learns that men are meeting in an area of the forest she has considered her own special area. They are violent men and when she sets a trap to try and make them leave they react by killing a tame rabbit she had taken care of for a time.

The situation gets worse as she spies on them and learns that they are planning to blow up the school. Her father is ill and away, and her mother has gone to be with him. The sheriff is in cahoots with the KKK members, so the only person she can turn to for help is Jeffrey who has been banned from ever having anything to do with Mendy again, this due to the fact that he is white and she is black.

The sheer evilness of the men is shown as well and carefully as it can be in a book for younger readers. The strength of the racial hatred is also shown, and how it can even reach into those in "official" positions, or even to one's own parents. It's a much, much darker type of story than the non-mystery American Girl stories, but it's also a very important story, especially since the type of hatred that is discussed in the book still occurs today, although the target of that hate may not always be blacks but can be people who are gay, lesbians, people of Arab descent, people who follow a different spiritual path, etc.

The book does show that it's up to individual people to do whatever they can to work against such hatred and that, in time, they will succeed.

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