Devil on My Heels [Hardcover]

Joyce McDonald (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2004

It’s 1959 in Benevolence, Florida, and life is as sweet as a Valencia orange for 15-year-old Dove Alderman. Whether she’s sipping cherry Cokes with her girlfriends and listening to the Everly Brothers, eating key lime pie made by her housekeeper, Delia, or cruising around town with the coolest boy in school in his silver-blue T-bird convertible, Dove’s days are as smooth and warm as the soft sand in her father’s orange groves.

But there’s trouble brewing among the local migrant workers. Mysterious fires have broken out, and rumors are spreading that disgruntled pickers are to blame. Suddenly, black and white become a muddy shade of gray, and whispers of the KKK drift through the Southern air like sighs. The Klan could never exist in a place like Benevolence, Dove tells herself. Or could it?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Review: Benevolence, Florida, in the late 1950's doesn't seem like it could be the scene of ugly racism and violence. Fifteen-year-old Dove Alderman reads poetry, strolls through her daddy's orange groves, and rides around with Chase Tully in his silver-blue T-bird convertible. So when fires start breaking out in the groves, and nasty spats happen on the streets of Benevolence, the truth is slow to dawn on Dove. Her awakening is agonizing, but ultimately freeing.

In this complex and moving novel by Joyce McDonald (Swallowing Stones, Shades of Simon Gray), a privileged teen discovers that the line between right and wrong is often blurry, but important to establish. McDonald delves into the chilling world of the Ku Klux Klan, depicting the fear at the core of the hatred. Dove's education will parallel that of young readers who may not yet comprehend the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which one group can fear and oppress another--even half a century after this story takes place. (Ages 12 and older) --Emilie Coulter

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-9–This suspenseful story is set in the Florida orange groves of the 1950s. Dove, 15, is increasingly aware of the tensions between the white grove owners and the black migrant workers who pick the fruit. She has a budding romance with Chase Tully, and is concerned about Gator, a black friend who works in her father's grove and is increasingly angry about the conditions. When fires break out in the area, suspicion falls on the orange pickers. Dove begins to question many things, which leads her to discover a Klan meeting in progress. Not only does she see Chase Tully there, she also sees her father. This eventually leads to an exciting, violent but overly melodramatic confrontation between the young people and the Klansmen. Except for Delia, the Alderman family's black housekeeper, the adults in this story do not have a lot to offer. Dove's father weakly goes along with the crowd because he has known these people all his life. The old-boy network that runs the town is full of stereotypical racists. But make no mistake, this well-written story conveys the simmering racial hatred and bigotry of the times. Gator is a strong, admirable character who is tempting fate by having a white girlfriend and by actively advocating for the workers. Chase and Dove are earnest young people trying to make the best of a bad situation. Period details about movies, cars, hairdos, and the like add authenticity. This is certainly a page-turner and it will give readers insight into a difficult and shameful part of American history.–Bruce Anne Shook, Mendenhall Middle School, Greensboro, NC
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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385731078
• ISBN-13: 978-0385731072
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,919,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joyce McDonald is the author of several critically acclaimed middle grade and young adult novels, most notably Swallowing Stones, an American Library Association Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults and Booklist's 100 Best of the Best 1966 - 2003, and Shades of Simon Gray, an ALA Best Book and Edgar Allen Poe Award Nominee. She is also the author of The Stuff of Our Forebears: Willa Cather's Southern Heritage (University of Alabama Press). Her most recent novel is Devil on My Heels. She teaches in Spalding University's Brief-residency MFA in Writing Program.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great story, October 25, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Devil on My Heels (Library Binding)

This book has everything -- mystery, suspense, romance -- and a great story too. I felt like I was in a time machine, back to Florida in the 1950s. I learned about racial attitudes of the time, but the author didn't preach. She got her ideas across with a great story. They should make it into a movie!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review for Devil on My Heels, December 19, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Devil on My Heels (Hardcover)

Devil on My Heels is a book that displays both racism and loyalty. It takes place in Benevolence, Florida in 1959. Fifteen-year-old Dove spends her time in the Benevolence Baptist Cemetery reading poems to dead boys, since they "listen and don't walk away" like the other boys. As a child she played in her father's orange groves with Chase Tully, and Gator, and African American orphan. Suddenly, there are fires breaking out in the groves, both the Mexican and African American are blamed. Dove then discovers that both her father and Chase Tully are part of the Ku Klux Klan, which leads to Delia, their African American housekeeper, no longer work for them. The racial hatred leads Travis Waite to beat Gator up, and beat his face with a belt buckle. Gator starts going out with a white woman, and stirs up trouble. Dove's relationship with her dad will never be the same after she found out about the Ku Klux Klan, and especially after she finds out her father had been hiding a shoe box full of pictures of Dove's mother. Soon everything returns to normal, but Travis is left without a job, and Delia will receive money. This books demonstrates how people can change with the influence of other people, but can overcome this influence from the help of good people.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Devil on My Heels: An Honors MAH Review, December 19, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Devil on My Heels (Mass Market Paperback)

The novel "Devil on My Heels" by Joyce McDonald is a great outline of the post-WWII time period. It showed how racism still played a major part in society. For example, "When he gets about two feet from me, he leans forward and spits right in my face. 'Nigger lover,' he says" (238). Back before the Civil Rights Movement, white people treated colored people with much disrespect. This is reflected in the novel by the way Travis Waite and the Klan beat up Gator (Dove's colored friend). They automatically assume that Gator is the cause of all the troubles Travis Waite had been going through because none of his workers had shown up for work. In addition, McDonald consistntly brings up the point that a colored-white relationship would be out of the question through Rosemary and Gator's secret relationship. Apparently, during this time, if a colored man was in a relationship with a white woman, they would get beaten or maybe even killed. Therefore, Rosemary and Gator's relationship was kept very secretive. Another post-WWII issue McDonald successfully tackles in this novel is the Ku Klux Klan. She does a great job of proving that the Klan caused many disturbances; specific to this novel was setting fires to migrant camps. As Dove is searching for answers to who has been setting these fires, she learns that her own father is a member of the Klan: "I am holding a blue-green card with the letters KKK at the top. And there, at the bottom, is my dad's signature" (155). From here on out, Dove's purpose is to get down to the bottom of this and try to stop these terrible things from happening again. At the end of the novel, everything plays out and Dove makes a difference by standing up for Gator, although this does not end in the KKK's cease to exist. McDonald does a great job of showing how the Ku Klux Klan played a major role in society after WWII. Overall, this book does an excellent job of informing the reader how life after WWII would have been.
What is the truth and how do you know? Proven this novel, it is almost impossible to tell what is and isn't the truth. Many times, Dove would ask questions, and wouldn't recieve answers. She constanly asked Chase if he knew anything about the fires or what had been going on at the migrant camps. Just about everytime she asked these questions, Chase would veer away from the subject. Therefore, whenever he did answer her questions, she could never really tell if he was being truthful or not. Also apparent in the novel, Dove had troubles getting the truth out of her father. He would go to secret meetings late at night and not tell her what he was doing or where he was going: "'You take off, don't tell me where you're going. Most of the time I don't know where the heck you are'" (179). When she later found out that these were Klan meetings her father had been attending, Dove was infuriated. She felt as if she could no longer trust her father without second guessing if he was really being truthful. McDonald proves in this novel that the only way to the real truth is to find it yourself.