For decades, a riot that killed three hundred people and wounded
hundreds of others was scarcely heard of. But several new studies
have focused attention on Tulsa's Greenwood race riot of 1921. In
If We Must Die novelist Pat Carr turns that tragedy into a riveting
novel.
	
   When Berneen O'Brien's mother dies, the seventeen-year-old
moves from Wyoming to Tulsa to live with her stern uncle.
Berneen secures a teaching position at Liberty Elementary School.
When she meets the principal, Nelson Flowers, she is amazed to
find that he is a black man. Slowly, as she meets the other teachers,
Berneen realizes that she is teaching in a black school. Her worries
about being an outcast soon disappear, as the other teachers make
her welcome. Berneen, who is of Black-Irish descent, doesn't
realize that the teachers and students all assume she is also black.

   At school and after hours Berneen finds herself moving in the
world of the segregated Greenwood neighborhood. And she finds
herself increasingly drawn to Nelson Flowers.

   Racial tension erupts into violence when a young white girl
accuses a black shoeshine boy of raping her in an office-building
elevator. Whites burn Greenwood and storm the neighborhood,
shooting and beating black men, women, and children.

Berneen is trapped in the school with Nelson Flowers and the
teachers when the mob approaches. The story of their desperate
attempt to escape is realistic and frightening, made more so by its
historical accuracy.

   This novel is both insightful and a real page-turner.

_________________________________________________________

PAT CARR has taught English at Rice, Tulane, the University of
New Orleans, and several other universities. She is the author of
four novels, three nonfiction titles, and four book-length
short-story collections. She and her husband have retired to Elkins,
Arkansas.




A Chaparral Book for Young Readers