The Snake in the Garden is a collaboration between two women – one Black, one white – that delves into the minds of both Black and white characters. The result is an explosive depiction of racism in 20th-century America, and a powerful story of transcendence over the scars of the past. It's a riveting novel of love, racism and justice that resonates in our time and should be part of the discussion of racism in America today.

          Pop singer Regina Day, exiled at sixteen from her hometown in Arkansas by a racist judge, has learned to fit in with the white celebrity world of Los Angeles. But memories of her Jim Crow past still haunt her. Does she dare go back for her mother's funeral?

          Karen Whittier has worked for her father, the judge, for twenty-five years. She longs for a true father-daughter bond, but in his eyes, she can do no right. She fills her barren life with chocolate and English romance novels. Can she muster the courage to defy him?

          In 1963, when the girls were teenagers, Jim Crow laws prevailed in Arkansas. Whites and Blacks were kept apart, and intimate relationships between them were illegal. Young Black men could be jailed for merely looking at a white girl, and lynching happened far too often. Then, on the night of President Kennedy's assassination, all hell broke loose in the town, and Regina and Karen were embroiled in a tragedy that changed the course of their lives. Thirty years later, can they overcome the trauma of that night? Will they be able to join together to seek justice, find answers to long-hidden family secrets, and expel the ghosts of the past from their own lives?

          The Snake in the Garden looks at racism in 20th-century America through the lens of four generations of interracial relationships. Set in different periods throughout the last century, it's a story that still resonates in our time. Filled with historical detail, it offers hope that the "snake" of racism can one day be cast out of the garden.

          This book could be useful in college classrooms because it will cause people to look deep into their own hearts to examinetheir  feelings about race in our society today.