The Minstrel's Melody

This is the 11th book in the History Mysteries series. The year is 1904 and a 12-year-old black girl named Orphelia has an excellent talent both for singing and for playing the piano. She loves to do both but her mother wants to restrict her totally to doing things only for the church and is very strongly against Orphelia playing any of the jazz or ragtime music that is popular. She's very rough on Orphelia, always treating her younger sister Pearl much better.

Orphelia's mother gets mad at her very easily and one day bans Orphelia from playing for a visiting minstrel show. Orphelia, in turn, ends up running away to join the show and manages to stay with them for a while. Madame Meritta, the star of the show, does try to get Orphelia reunited with her parents but one thing after another happens. Orphelia does get a chance to perform and is very well received by the audience.

At the same time there is a man named Reuben who has serious mental problems. Orphelia is scared of him but then, as things develop, it seems that she may have an idea who Reuben really is. She needs to figure that out before her parents show up to take her away from the traveling show.

The early part of this book was not something I liked since the mother is a totally unsympathetic character at that point and the way she treats Orphelia is not good. She's also too focused on confining Orphelia's talents to things in the church, ignoring everything outside as far as music goes.

The book gets going when Orphelia runs away, ties up with the traveling show and tries to figure out who this Reuben person is. It turns out the mother had her own reasons for the way she acted towards Orphelia, these being revealed late in the book.

Overall the book is fairly good, but getting past the nasty mother in the first part of the story may take some doing on the reader's part. It's a book that some people would simply give up on after the first few chapters.

Back to American Girls index page

Back to main home page index