Three girls from Bronzeville : a uniquely American memoir of race, fate, and sisterhood / Dawn Turner.

Our ledge -- Bricks and blood -- A caped crusader -- The principal's office -- Pomegranate seeds and little red pills -- "Death riding on a soda cracker" -- Miss Polaroid -- Roots and Good Times -- The violation, the maiming -- A cleaving -- A rabbit-assed mind -- The academy rewards (take one) -- The academy rewards (take two) -- "Pray for your sister" -- Humble pie -- Three miracle candles -- A baby-blue aspirator -- Choices -- The steps -- Leaving lawless -- Pasties -- "Prophet told us a storm was coming" -- A sad, sad suit -- "Dawn, can you take my call?" -- Diamonds and other birthstones -- Perspectives -- A plan for transformation -- The rock -- Dispatches to our fathers -- "Down the line" -- Pomp and circumstances -- Girls school road -- Fast-forward not available -- Two good families -- The end date -- "Crack the gate!" -- "Lordy, lordy, lordy" -- Three girls from Bronzeville.

"They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded-fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls-as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise, albeit nascent and fragile, that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. Their working-class, striving parents are eager for them to realize this hard-fought potential. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks' business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures-Dawn and Debra, doctors, Kim a teacher. For a brief, wondrous moment the girls are all giggles and dreams and promises of 'friends forever.' And then fate intervenes, first slowly and then dramatically, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There's heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Dawn struggles to make sense of the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why?" --publisher's website