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Caucasia was a really good novel. In fact, I had known that it was so intriguing a read, I would have read it sooner. This was a book that has been on the shelves for so long that I actually forgot about it. It may be a book that has been out for so long that many have forgotten about it because I never hear it mentioned in book circles nor have I seen it on anyone's reading list to remind us of its existence. I think it would be a great book club or discussion read because it brings up so many points about race in our ever changing yet stagnant society that it leads one into a mode of self assessment. I started asking myself questions about how I view things, how I have been viewed and what I have observed about the viewing of race. All these things become a topic of discussion because of a story about two girls who are the same, yet different and their adventure in a world that likes to talk about equality but acts with difference.

Sisters Cole aka Colette and Birdie Lee's parents were a mixed race couple who married in the late sixties. Their father Deck was a professor and their mother Sandy was a liberal from a well to do Boston family. They were ver active in politics and the Black Power movement. They both seemed to view their family in the scope of the Revolution. Sandy seemed to constantly want to prove that she was not a part of the racist white upper middle class. She wanted to prove that she was tough, that she got along with everyone regardless of their from her and that she was down for the cause by any means necessary and she wasn't afraid to put action behind it. Deck was philosophical about his views on race. He was obsessed with proving his sociological points about race that not only was it his constant subject of conversation but it seemed he viewed his own mixed family as a scientific experiment that he wrote books about.

Of the two mixed children, Cole is more brown with curly hair and is unmistakable a black child. Birdie is more fair skinned with straight hair and could pass. This book deals a lot with how the two were excepted in the world and even by their own parents. Add on top of these issues the adventure and it makes for very interesting reading. The adventure? The adventure really begins when their parents political views in 1976 cause a reaction that changes all their lives forever. I don't want to give the story away but it's monumental and you will be emotionally involved in this book. Two narcissists in the name of freedom affect two young lives.

I'm giving this 4 stars. I definitely recommend reading this: it's historical, geographical, to understand race, to identify with race, to ask yourself some heavy race questions, to note how parental actions shape or break young lives. I related to a lot of things a lot and was educated on a point of view for others. I can't believe no one is talking about this book anymore. It is worth so much dissection. I would read more by this author.