Book Review: Same Kind of Different as Me

Denver's voice is the first one heard and he opens the story by saying, "Until Miss Debbie, I'd never spoke to no white woman before. Just answered a few questions, maybe--it wadn't really speakin. And to me, even that was mighty risky since the last time I was fool enough to open my mouth to a white woman, I wound up half-dead and nearly blind." Now, that's a great start to a story -- it caught my attention.

This is a gut-wrenchingly honest book (I even shed a few tears and had a hard time returning to it at one point) -- friendship, loyalty, prejudices, fears, sin, love, forgiveness, doubts, anger, pain, loss, greed, trust, dashed dreams, crushed hopes. Two very dissimilar men (Hall and Denver) become friends -- Hall's wife sort of pushes Hall into the relationship. While it is a book about friendship, the message of the book is equally how much impact one person (Deborah Hall) can have on all the people around her. Interesting way to write the book with the "voices" of Hall and Denver alternating throughout the book -- often every other chapter but, occasionally, there will be 2-3 chapters of Hall followed by a chapter of Denver.

(Disclaimer: The second time through, I received a free review copy from the publisher through their Blogger Review program, BookLook Bloggers. I was free to write the review I believed the book deserved -- an easy task with this book.)