Witness
by Karen Hesse
Published by Random House 2001 Audio book
Genre: Historical Fiction, Racism, Prejudices and Social Issues
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Summary: This book about a small town in Vermont in 1924 when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. Members of this community turn against each other under the influence of the KKK. The Klan is very subtle when it moves in to a new place. At first they offer aid to the needy and destiute, but if you're not white and protestant, and you have problems, the Klan would lift one finger to help you. They targeted Catholics, African-Americans and Jewish people. Slowly they bought up the loyalties of this town. Then the open persecution begins. First with a rock through Sarah Chickering's window. Their reason, Sarah had a Jewish man and his six year old daughter, Esther Hirsh living with her. Then they sent Merlin Van Tornhout, just a young kid, no more than twenty years old to poison the Sutter family's well. But he couldn't do it because he had watched as Leanora Sutter had saved Esther Hirsh's lives from the path of a moving train and he saw her watching him attempting to poison her family's well, so he couldn't do it. He ran away instead. That same night someone shot Esther's father through Sarah Chickering's kitchen door. The scariest thing about it is little Esther was sitting on her father's lap at the time. The bullet went through his right arm, grazed his chest and through his right arm. If Esther hadn't been leaning forward, that bullet would have killed her. So Merlin Van Tornhout was charged with the crime, he didn't do it and Esther knows it because she saw who shot her father and it wasn't Merlin.
Response: This book has really opened my eyes to just how ugly the KKK really was. I mean, I know they had persecutes African Americans, but I had no idea how far their prejudice extending or how far they would go to try and drive those that deemed as unAmerican from their midst. That's another thing, the KKK only considered White Protestant to be 100% American, but those they persecuted had been this country for decades and in most cases so had their fathers and their grandfathers. The evil and ugliness that were dealt by this organization and any of those like it is just gut-wretching to me.
