Nine O'Clock Blue

Nine O'Clock Blue got my attention with the riveting first page andnever let me down through to the equally exciting and unexpectedending.Poetic and vivid in its description of the times, places andevents that shaped the life of the intriguing main character Delia MayBurris. Her tragic life experiences help us to understand more aboutour suffering society and explores the most challenging issue ofracial prejudice with compassion and insight.In the end the skilledand gifted writer Teresa Langness shows the potentially redeemablegoodness of humanity though characters who made choices we can admireand emulate in our lives.

I just finished reading Nine O'Clock Blue and highly recommend this moving and engaging story. The soul-journey of its heroine takes you through a powerful range of human emotions and experience: from childhood innocence, to the demands of an adult awareness -- and its need to reconcile the unforgettable past with the hope and potential of the present. This is a gripping and compassionate story of the life of Delia Burris (from childhood, adolesence to adulthood) which chronologically unfolds against a backdrop of key, historic civil rights events -- masterfully interwoven with a poignant prose and mystical plot twists that are sure to keep all readers intrigued. Experience the journey of the Nine O'Clock Blue story, you'll be glad you did.

Choose an uninterrupted time to read this book whose layers of poetry, anguish and hope interweave to create world so terribly real that the reader becomes absorbed, transported by Langness' masterful storytelling. She addresses the eternal questions that separate and define people, that perpetuate divisions. The intimate experiences of family and small town life expose the tensions that explode in an urban nightmare. What is the role of the oppressed? the privileged? the observer? For those who wonder, Nine O'clock Blue provides both insight and inspiration through a gripping, compelling story intertwined with characters who remain your companions and settings that permeate your senses. This ageless book belongs in your library, to reread, to share, to cherish.Lea Ann King, Commissioner, Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations

Teresa Langness is a wonderful literary writer who deserves attention from both critics and the public. She manages to cross racial and gender lines by virtually seeping into characters. I loved the novel on its own, but because she's white, I find the novel fascinating and amazing.

You'll never forget the opening chapter of "Nine O'Clock Blue," the most vivid I've read since "Moby Dick." By the time you're half way through the book, you already feel as if you know Delia May Burris as well as some of your close friends. And you'll admire her for soldiering on through tragedies that would sink ordinary folk.Langness' storytelling, for me, brings to mind "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Cold Mountain." You can hear the cicadas. You can feel the breeze coming through the pines, and you can smell the smoke from very different fires in very different settings. Just as important, you care what happens to the characters (since you get to know them so well).Book clubs should check it out. It will stimulate conversations that could go on for months.