What do readers think of The Air Between Us by Deborah Johnson? Write your own review.

Growing up in the South during this time (the 50's and 60's), I found this book very enjoyable and eye-opening. I think this book would appeal to others raised during this time that had a very limited understanding of the reasons for the integration conflicts. The plot was well constructed and moved along without time to be bored with any repetition . I would have liked for there to have been more background on most of the characters leading up to the time they all came together. I will recommend this book to my book club.

This book is set in a small Mississippi town in the 60's where school integration is as inevitable as it is unwelcome. The story catches you from the start like the rivers current that runs behind Miss Melba's cottage. You're swept along through all the characters lives, each bend revealing a sweet surprise or a nasty secret. From history to mystery, this book has it all.

The era of integration and impending desegregation is the backdrop for an engrossing character driven story of the people of a small town in Mississippi. A mystery unfolds as the protaganists, a white doctor and a black doctor, face the problems and the questions that arise. The story grabbed me immediately and held my interest to the end. Most of the main characters are very fully drawn and the author truly gets the feel of a small southern town of the times. Besides being an excellent read, we are reminded that even though we've come a long way in race relations, we have not come far enough ... Read it!

This is a pleasant southern novel that gently unfolds with rich characterization and sense of setting. In some ways simple, it is also very satisfying by the end. The characters really made this book.

Deborah Johnson has written a wonderful story set in the South during the 1960's civil rights movement. Her writing style is superb and the story carries you along into the lives of people who were just trying to get along in life.

You meet characters that you can both love and hate and you really cannot put the book down until the end.

I enjoyed this book - it held my attention and I can identity with the situation. I grew up in Texas long before integration so the book did seem believable. What is unbelievable is how things were in the South during my early years. I have memories of discrimination that I think couldn't have happened in my lifetime! When I read or watch stories about segregation/integration I often hang my head in sadness and grief.

This book brought up these feelings in me. For that reason it gets a "good". Although it is not a complex book, It is well written and clear. The writing style is simple; the story is engaging; the characters are well formed, three dimensional and I cared what happened to them. The mystery is driven by the characters and doesn't seemed forced. I found myself often thinking about the story and I wanted to know the conclusion - that also qualifies it as a good book, worthy of the read and I'd recommend it to a friend. I belong to 4 book clubs and I don't think I would recommend it - although the story is complex, the book is not challenging. It is a good book for a long airplane trip or a beach read.

If you are looking for a novel where you can try to solve a mystery while learning about things that happened in the past then this is the one for you. The Air Between Us takes you along for the ride of racial tension between blacks and whites in the 60's and what happens when you try to provide equal education for the first time in the south. It allows you to see how relationships may have been between blacks and white folks then and how each thought about what was happening to their world.

The 50's and 60's were fraught with confusion, anger and hope as America began its attempt to put away the sentiments of prejudice and bigotry which ignorance had fostered. Deborah Johnson employs Revere, Mississippi as the setting for one town's struggle with the concept of equality between the races. Much of the struggle takes place below the surface as the individuals begin to recognize the ghosts of the past are of importance to their furture. Ms. Johnson portrays a town of people each of whom is caught in his own struggle while trying to create a school system providing equal education - but at the price of the separateness that they want preserved as their protection against their own fears of the future. These people have grown intricately woven relationships which are physically and emotionally so intertwined that merely "the air between" them keeps them separate.