Guardian is haunting. The story is extremely well written. It is both descriptive and so raw that it is uncomfortable to read. That is what I liked about it. The book addresses social issues and mature themes (rape, lynching). Highly recommended as a must-read for teens and adults.

Pros: Your emotions and your thinking will be stretched in new directions as you walk alongside Ansel and Willie in this powerful novel.

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This not a feel good novel by any means. It tells it like it was in the South. Where ppl were still referred to as the "N" word and other ppl could control their fate at the drop of a hat. It is sad, but it is history. This would be a good book to read in high school while studying that time period. It is a short/quick read and is easy to understand. ( )

This slim book demonstrates the devastation that a lie of omission can create in a family. Ansel and his father come upon a murdered girl’s body and allow another to be accused, knowing who really did it. What followers is a horrible lynching. Ansel’s loss of respect for his father changes his life forever.

Powerful book. Statistics at the end give the tragic data of lynching in the U.S. ( )

Loved this book. It was a quick read with a powerful message. I recommended this for a middle school group read. Provides lots of thought-provoking discussion. Themes of friendship and integrity combine with the darker side of black history to pack a punch! ( )

This book discusses an important but disturbing piece of American history – racially inspired mob lynching in the 1940s South. The book takes on the perspective of several people living in a small town where a shocking and violent rape results in an innocent man’s life being taken. I admire the author tackling such a weighty issue, but I had two major problems with this book. The first is that the slim book focuses on less than a week’s worth of time, and I feel like the characters and writing style both suffer from this. Instead of letting the characters have time to develop, the author has to just come out and say what the characters are supposed to be like – i.e., he is evil, he is good, he is scared, etc. – rather than show this through a more elaborate unfolding of the major characters. As a consequence, the reader never really feels like the characters could be real people (instead of caricatures) and can’t feel connected with the characters. The second problem I had is with the writing style. For much of the book, it feels almost like the author is writing stage directions rather than a novel. In addition, I didn’t particularly like the way the omniscient narrator jumps back and forth between the past, present, and future within a sentence or a paragraph. (For instance, note the discontinuity in this paragraph: “As the Reverend walks back into the crowd, people eagerly step forward to shake his hand, pat him on the back, express their condolences over his loss. Many of them will think back on this night when, the very next summer, the Reverend is caught with one of the girls from the Junior Choir, which is what had happened in Atlanta. The Reverend and his wife were barely given time to pack before they left Davis. No one knew where he went, and no one cared.” – p. 87). Personally, I also felt like many of the situations in this book were more adult than young adult in nature. Honestly, the best part of the book for me was the historical facts included in the back of the book. ( )