Julie Miliner

The Sharecropper's Daughter Julie Miliner

The Sharecropper's Daughter tells the story of Frank Lee, a girl born to a black mother and a white father in 1930s South Carolina. Frank Lee grows up between the precarious backdrop of being black but looking white amid racist and ambiguous times. She is forced to find a balance between a mother who finds it difficult to embrace her and a father she will never know. Abandoned at birth she is shuffled from one place to another, sometimes with relatives but sometimes with strangers who value the weekly stipend they receive for her care more than the girl herself. She is eventually reunited with her mother but the relationship is strained and uncertain. This is an epic tale that spans the time of slavery through the 1950s. The characters are rich and fluent in the language of survival and perseverance. There is love, loss, pain and forgiveness that every reader will identify with.