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I'd previously read Black Cake and loved it. I then watched it on Hulu and decided the book was better. So I had high expectations of Good Dirt, and I think that was warranted. This is the kind of book I'd like to read with my teenage goddaughters. While they are smart and enrolled in the advanced placement history classes, I think stories like this one could really help them connect the dots between what's covered in the classroom and what it might mean to be Black in the US, 160 years after slavery was finally abolished. To raise children into becoming antiracist adults, they need access to books like this - books that draw a direct line from the first kidnappings, the Middle Passage, and how even today, that history of slavery means something to the identities of my girls' classmates, neighbors, and friends who are Black.

I think there are a lot of books out there that could do the same thing and even do it more effectively, but I also believe that the more they are exposed to books like this, the more readily they'll spot the micro aggressions, the faster they will step up to defend, the more passionately they will protest, and the more beautifully they'll manage their relationships with sensitivity and love. I say this about my goddaughters, but actually, reading more and more such books can help us in this manner at any age.

I thought it was interesting to anchor the story on a cold case. I thought the book was going to unravel who broke in and killed Baz. I did not expect it to be a book about a broken heart, a broken family, or a jar. But here's why I think the cold case is important to the book. I had a friend years ago whose only brother (in a family of five siblings, he was the only son) was murdered in a drive by shooting. Houston police were happy to let that one sit unsolved because it was assumed to be a gang shooting. My friend's mother had to do all the detective work and walk the shooter into the police station. Had she not done so, this might still be a cold case today. By juxtaposing Ebby's Black family to Henry's white one, both families having wealth but Ebby's being questioned as to what they did that their home was invaded and their child killed and Ebby being assumed to be the problem in the relationship between the families, by centering the narrative against the cold case, it serves to highlight how wealth and status cannot and do not protect them from social racial profiling, just like my friend's brother and the Houston police department.

Ebby has had to overcome a lot in her young life. She is a character I could love, were she a real person. I could also learn a lot from her. I know it was her grandmother who instilled class in her - I couldn't keep it together like she did in France. Aside from her composure, she was also really clear with her boundaries. I struggle with this too. I would like to learn to be as mature as she is in her relatively young adult life.