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Elizabeth Berg's latest novel, WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE, is set in Tupelo, Mississippi, during the Freedom Summer of 1964 --- the town where Elvis was born and where racial tensions are simmering just barely below the surface. During this summer we meet Diana Dunn ("Sounds like a movie star!"): 14 years old, young enough to be enraptured by movie stars and Seventeen magazine's back-to-school issue, and old enough to be desiring her freedom from small-town life and from the shadow of her mother, even while craving her mother's attention. But escaping her mother often seems impossible.
Struck by polio while pregnant with Diana, Paige Dunn is a beautiful, smart, and very strong-minded woman who, in spite of being abandoned by Diana's father and spending three years in an iron lung, gives birth to a healthy baby girl and is determined to raise her daughter herself. Although paralyzed from the neck down, Paige enlists the help of Peacie, a tough-talking but big-hearted African-American housekeeper, and the three of them get by on hard work, creative financing, and charity. Diana and her friend Suralee make pocket money by putting on plays, often enlisting the help of Peacie's easygoing boyfriend LaRue. But there's rarely enough money to make ends meet, and certainly not enough to pay for round-the-clock care for Paige.
The demands on 14-year-old Diana at times feels never-ending. She chafes at her lack of freedom and with the way some of the townspeople treat her and her mother, and dreams of escape. But when LaRue decides to head to Meridian to take an active role in the Freedom Summer, helping blacks register to vote, the racial tensions of the times hit home and Diana learns quite a bit about what freedom really means. She learns to re-evaluate her definition of family, and that character and compassion have very little to do with physical ability.
Berg's ability to get inside her adolescent protagonist is flawless. As with DURABLE GOODS and JOY SCHOOL, she serves up Diana as a perfect mix of budding independence and childlike need. Berg also perfectly captures the fascinatingly complex relationships between girls of that age, and the exchanges between Diana and Suralee are spot-on. Diana and Paige's tale is based on a true story, and in Paige, Berg has created a multidimensional woman who refuses to be defined by her handicap. At times awe-inspiring and at times selfish, she is a very real and engaging portrait.
Uncharacteristically of Berg's work, the story is, sadly, saddled with an improbable ending that feels forced. While it leaves a bit of a sour taste, it is Berg's light and masterful touch with her characters that her fans will connect and identify with, and WE ARE ALL WELCOME HERE delivers in this regard. Although far from her best work, Berg still pens a winning story that will connect with her many fans.
--- Reviewed by Lourdes Orive
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