Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Calling Me Home

Women tell their hairdressers some things that they don't even tell their best friends. Hairdressers claim that nothing their clients say shocks them.  Whatever relationships exist between client and hairdresser, they rarely extend beyond scheduled salon appointments. Dorrie  Curtis and Isabelle McAllister, however, develop an unconventional friendship exceeding age and race. 

In a novel spanning 70 years, "Calling Me Home" gives intimate insights into multiple interracial relationships.  On a road trip from Arlington to Cincinnati in order to attend a funeral,  Isabelle and Dorrie reveal more of their pasts to each other.  As time on the road progresses, both women's stories come to light.  While Dorrie is worried about her new beau being "too good to be true," we see firsthand her daily encounters and dismissals based on her skin color.  We learn that Isabelle grew up the daughter of a doctor in a home where the color of your skin determined if you were able to be in town after sundown. Rather than these being divisive issues, they draw the two women together.  Isabelle divulges to Dorrie  her struggles from falling in love with a young man that was not considered an appropriate match for her and the myriad of problems that ensued from following her heart.  In a time and society that was even less colorblind than today, we are shown that while we may have made great strides, we are most definitely not living in a post racial world. 

In a style both wistful and sharp, Julie Kibler's "Calling Me Home" will make you sigh with beauty and cry in response to the darknesses of humanity.