The Outskirts of Hope

In 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his young family from a suburb of Boston to a small town in the heart of the Mississippi cotton fields, where he became the medical director of a clinic that served the poor population for miles around. But ultimately it was not Ivesters father but her mothera stay-at-home mother of four who became a high school English teacher when the family moved to the Southwho made the most enduring mark on the town. In The Outskirts of Hope, Ivester uses journals left by her mother, as well as writings of her own, to paint a vivid, moving, and inspiring portrait of her familys experiences living and working in an all-black town during the height of the civil rights movement.