It’s a hot and slow summer in Turtle Dove Junction, and as usual 10-year-old Marlene is spending it helping her parents with chores and playing with her younger brother Silas. When she visits the local grocery store to sell eggs, she catches sight of a stray coon dog and is determined to befriend him. She soon learns that a mean, old neighbor has been heckling the dog, and a dear friend. Marlene wrangles the stray and navigates clashing opinions in her southern town. Set in rural Tennessee in the 1930’s, Red and Me is a heartwarming story of family, friends, adventure, and the special bond between human and dog. It also gives readers a glimpse into life in a rural southern town in the 1930’s and the realities of racial discrimination. This story for young readers beautifully melds a child’s innocence and sense of wonder with a confrontation of the real world. Set during the Great Depression, Terry Lee Caruthers’s historical novel Red and Me is a bittersweet story about a spunky girl and her bighearted hound. From the moment ten-year-old Marlene sees a skittish abandoned stray with red fur that matches her own hair, she knows he is meant to be her dog. Convincing her father takes time, but he at last agrees: Tame Red, and she can bring him home. With help from sweet townsfolk, Marlene and Red learn to trust one another. Together, they persevere through tragedy. Feisty Marlene narrates with less-than-perfect grammar and manners. She has a penchant for the dramatic—one villainous man earns the epithet “Evil Old Mr. Arthur.” Her voice embodies preadolescent hopes, curiosity, and confusion. Marlene feels big feelings, worrying herself sick when she thinks she cannot help Red and struggling to comprehend the abhorrent racism and ensuing fallout she witnesses in her small town. Kind adults serve as anchors amid Marlene’s emotional tempest. Best friends Mr. Sam and Mr. Jake impart life lessons in the form of fables. Marlene’s parents provide patient guidance, explaining in simple terms that people like Mr. Arthur sometimes do terrible things for terrible reasons, like racism. With Red by her side, Marlene finds the courage to testify in court against one such injustice. The story’s ending is not rose-colored, nor could it be. Bullying, danger, and murder shake the lives of Turtle Dove Junction’s residents, but Red is a faithful companion through it all. In the story’s dramatic climax, he takes heroic action to save Marlene’s family. The final pages are tinged by heartbreak but not lost in it; Marlene’s unconditional love for Red grounds the book. A compassionate girl rescues a scared dog who soon returns the favor in the historical novel Red and Me. ––VIVIAN TURNBULL, Foreword Reviews (May / June 2025) Written by Terry Lee Caruthers, RED AND ME is a young adult novel that belongs to another time. The setting is rural Tennessee, sometime in the 1930s. Marlene is a ten-year-old, ever-so-slightly tomboyish girl living in a tin-roofed shack with her mother, father, and younger brother Silas. One day she sees a stray dog “the color of rich Tennessee clay mud” running down the street that she is determined to have as her own. There is something Dorothy-esque about Marlene. Old enough to reason but not quite old enough to reason well, she imagines all sorts of calamities in which her life and Red’s (that’s what she calls the stray) intertwine again and again. This stymies her efforts to call the wayward creature her own, and her father balks at having a (literally) flea-bitten dog in the home before relenting. Her nemesis is Mr. Arthur, whose cruelty extends to throwing rocks at Red and who vows to kill him for rooting through his trashcans. Carruthers’s authorial voice is clear, commanding, and authoritative. As the novel is told in the first person and from the perspective of a child, it is particularly important to get the tone right—and Carruthers succeeds brilliantly in giving Marlene a distinctive voice. Her pronouncements not only exude personality but evoke the period, too. A passing illness is glossed as “puniness,” for example, and she “plumb” forgets things. There are many more Southern expressions besides, all of which (no less than the author’s keen eye for mundane details) help bring the period to life. In her attempts to gain the dog’s trust, Marlene learns patience and perseverance—as well as the need to stand her ground. In terms of tone, RED AND ME owes much to the rich vein of children’s literature exemplified by early twentieth-century writers such as Helen Fuller Orton. But it also evokes earlier literature in another way: the relative smallness of its vision. No one in it saves the world or goes through wretched tribulations. It’s a simple, straightforward story—a touch derivative, perhaps, but charmingly told. That is a rare enough thing these days, but Carruthers pulls it off with some élan. Terry Lee Caruthers’s RED AND ME is a charming, innocent tale of childhood in an America gone by— as well a