The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help by Kathryn Stockett was a fantastic read!  I really enjoyed it.  The characters were engaging, the storyline was interesting.  It's about a maid Aibileen who works for white women, raises their kids (in the book she's raising her17th white child) in Mississippi 1962.  She is good enough to raise a white woman's child but not good enough to use their indoor toilet.  Skeeter is a white woman who was raised by a black maid.  One day her maid Constantine leaves with no explanation.  Skeeter misses her dearly because she was like her mother.  Her own mother won't tell her anything about what happened to her.  She just wants Skeeter to get married and live a traditional life as a wife/mother.  Skeeter wants something different.  She becomes a writer, she gets an advice column in the local paper for household chores.  She knows nothing about any of that because she grew up with maids who did all that.  So she goes to the obvious source for the advice column, a black maid, and this is how she becomes friends with Aibileen.  Aibileen and Skeeter become fast friends, each helping the other with strength and courage to do what is right and to help change the extreme racist beliefs of the time. 

I could not put this book down.  I laughed out loud and felt sad, scared, all the emotions the characters felt.  It really brought you to another world and I love books like this.