DANCING IN CADILLAC LIGHT

It's 1968 in Moon, Texas. The wet-dog summer days find Jaynelle Lambert and her increasingly unpredictable Grandpap behind the wheel of a 1962 emerald green Cadillac convertible, cruising the steamy fields and roads to assuage their grief over Grandma's death. Kimberly J. Brown's squeaky Texas drawl breathes life into tough 11-year-old Jaynelle ("Boy" to her father; "Raccoon Gal" to Grandpap). She cares not for the girly things that her younger sister Racine lusts after. Brown snags Jaynelle's Texas dialect and keeps it front and center throughout her sassy first-person defense of Grandpap, whom everyone thinks has taken leave of his senses when he allows the poorest family in town to live in the family homestead. It's only after Grandpap's death, when he leaves everything to the Pickenses, that Jaynelle learns the dark secret in her beloved Grandpap's past that led him to his charitable acts. T.B. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 01]