"Mama always said you should live a life the same way you piece a quilt...You was the one to decide how your story turns out." Irene Latham's quilt metaphor depicts the story's arc, while its details explore how perception forms. This is a poignant story of racial tension, misguided understanding, and loss. "Sometimes things don't make sense, no matter how hard you try to figure it. Them are the times you got to find the courage to do what you think is best. You got to make up your own mind and see it through. Just like stitching a quilt." Well-written with content most appropriate for middle grade readers. SIBA Book Award Finalist Alabama Library Association Children's Book of the Year

Ludelphia Bennett may be blind in one eye, but that doesn't mean she can't put in a good stitch. In fact, Ludelphia sews all the time, especially when things are going wrong. But when Mama gets deathly ill, it doesn't seem like even quilting will help. Mama needs medicine badly--medicine that can only be found in Camden, over forty miles away. That's when Ludelphia decides to do something drastic--leave Gee's Bend. Beyond the cotton fields of her small sharecropping community, Ludelphia discovers a world she never imagined, but there's also danger lurking for a young girl on her own. Set in 1932 and inspired by the rich quilting traditions of Gee's Bend, Alabama, Leaving Gee's Bend is a delightful story of a young girl facing a brave new world, presented in a new paperback edition.