The Means That Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg

Adelaide is a wonderful protagonist.Nine Novels Announced as the Year’s Best Christian Fiction The Christy Award® celebration webcast featured bestselling authors Lisa Wingate, Chris Fabry, and the 2019 winning authors announcing the 2020 winnersĭebut novel “Whose Waves These Are” by Amanda Dykes wins The Christy Award® Book of the Year 'It made me feel like I was there-running through the grass, climbing the trees, smelling the fires and tasting the pomegranates and figs.' -Englewood Review of Books A deftly crafted and impressively entertaining story from first page to last.' -Children's Bookwatch Her bracing prose draws you into the lives of characters who live and breathe upon the page.' -Naeem Murr, author of The Perfect Man (long-listed for the Man Booker Prize) 'Christine Kindberg's fiction explores the complexity of identity, love, and faith with extraordinary intimacy and skill. The result is a gorgeous meditation on growing up, experiencing love, and finding home.” -Pinckney Benedict, three-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, author of Dogs of God and Miracle Boy and Other Stories

Christine Kindberg treats all of these characters graciously and with deep generosity. 'The Means That Make Us Strangers is a beautifully written coming-of-age story that will satisfy experienced readers as well as younger ones. Life in Greenville becomes interesting, and home becomes a much more complex equation.Īdelaide must finally choose where she belongs: the Ethiopian village where she grew up, to which she promised to return? Or this place where she's become part of something bigger than herself? Even as she navigates her family's expectations and her mother's depression, Adelaide starts to enjoy her new friendships, the chance to learn new things, and the time she spends with a blond football player. Then Adelaide becomes friends with the five African-American students who sued for admission into the white high school. But until she turns eighteen, Adelaide must adjust to this strange, white place that everyone tells her is home. Then her family moves to South Carolina, in 1964.Īdelaide vows to find her way back to Ethiopia, marry Maicaah, and become part of the village for real.

But who are your people?Īdelaide has lived her whole life in rural Ethiopia as the white American daughter of an anthropologist.

The Means That Make Us Strangers by Christine Kindberg