Ten-year-old Bobbi Rogers isn't supposed to listen to gossip, but she can't help herself. The arrival of Lucille Harris in Marshall, Texas, during the summer of 1960 causes quite a stir-a beautiful twenty-five-year-old widow will do that to a quiet neighborhood and a sleepy town.
Normally, Lucille would have quickly become old news, but then she accepts a teaching position at all-black Bishop College. And, of course, there's her relationship with Jim Tressell who's a married man.
Bobbi, who takes piano lessons from Lucille, thinks Jim is very nice to help Lucille with her garden. When she catches them kissing, she's confused but decides they must just be good friends.
Then Lucille is murdered, and all eyes turn to Jim-who has no alibi. Only a few people believe he's innocent. One is his lawyer, the brilliant but inexperienced Rufus Cornelius. Another is Bobbi who'll help in any way she can to save Jim from the electric chair.
Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, The Girl on Rusk Street is a look back at what is sometimes called a "simpler time"-and it serves as a reminder that simpler times were often anything but simple.
About the Author: Penny Carlile was born in Marshall, Texas, and grew up, not coincidentally, on Rusk Street. She and her husband now split their time between Marshall and Naples, Florida.
Carlile earned her bachelor of arts in English and speech from Baylor University in 1973. She taught junior high school before she cofounded a direct sales company with her husband. It was during her time as president of the company that she wrote her first book, Points from Penny.
The Girl on Rusk Street is fiction, but many of the events in the book are straight out of Carlile's own childhood.
