
Mockingbird Summer
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ren Hanami
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By:
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Lynda Rutledge
About this listen
A powerful and emotional coming-of-age novel set amid the turmoil and profound changes of the 1960s by the bestselling author of West with Giraffes.
In segregated High Cotton, Texas, in 1964, the racial divide is as clear as the railroad tracks running through town. It’s also where two girls are going to shake things up.
This is the last summer of thirteen-year-old Corky Corcoran’s childhood, and her family hires a Haitian housekeeper who brings her daughter, America, along with her. Corky is quick to befriend America and eager to share her favorite new “grown-up” novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. America’s take on it is different and profoundly personal. As their friendship grows, Corky finds out so much more about America’s life and her hidden skill: she can run as fast as Olympian Wilma Rudolph!
When Corky asks America to play with her girls’ softball team for the annual church rivals game, it’s a move that crosses the color line and sets off a firestorm. As tensions escalate, it fast becomes a season of big changes in High Cotton. For Corky, those changes will last a lifetime.
Set on the eve of massive cultural shifts, Mockingbird Summer explores the impact of great books, the burden of potential, and the power of friendship with humor, poignancy, and exhilarating hope.
©2024 by Lynda Rutledge. (P)2023 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“A brilliantly written coming-of-age novel that is set on the eve of massive cultural shifts throughout Texas and the American south, Mockingbird Summer is a deftly crafted novel by Lynda Rutledge.” —Midwest Book Review
“This is a well-thought-out book with a plot that keeps the reader engaged and presents realistic situations from the early Civil Rights Movement. The characters are complex and the depiction of racism only furthers the reader’s compassion for such hateful actions. Highly recommended.” —Historical Novel Society
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The Secrets of Good People
- A Novel
- By: Boo Walker, Peggy Shainberg
- Narrated by: Eric G. Dove, Meg Runyan
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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On a tiny island off Paradiso, Florida, in 1970, neighbors gather to toast two new arrivals: shy Catherine and her taciturn husband, Dr. Frank Overbrook, who is taking over an old friend’s medical practice. It’s an intimate welcoming for the newlyweds, who have abandoned city life for swaying palms and an ocean breeze. But the morning after is anything but peaceful when Frank is found dead on the beach.
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Excellent writing & performances!
- By KRISTI on 03-19-25
By: Boo Walker, and others
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The Rose Arbor
- A Novel
- By: Rhys Bowen
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl’s disappearance captivates the city. If Liz can break the story, it’s her way into the newsroom. She already has a scoop: Her best friend Marisa is a police officer who is assigned to the case. Liz follows Marisa to Dorset, where they make another disturbing discovery. Over two decades earlier, three girls disappeared while evacuating from London. One was found murdered in the woods near a train line. The other two were never seen again.
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Skip it.
- By 4Boxers!!!! on 12-14-24
By: Rhys Bowen
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Olivetti
- By: Allie Millington
- Narrated by: Christopher Gebauer, Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Being a typewriter is not as easy as it looks. Surrounded by books (notorious attention hogs) and recently replaced by a computer, Olivetti has been forgotten by the Brindles—the family he’s lived with for years. The Brindles are busy humans, apart from twelve-year-old Ernest, who would rather be left alone with his collection of Oxford English Dictionaries. Once a collector of words, now Olivetti only collects dust. He gets a rare glimpse of action from Ernest’s mom, Beatrice—his used-to-be frequent visitor—only for her to drop him off at Heartland Pawn Shop and leave him behind.
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Absolutely brilliant!
- By Stephanie C. on 05-14-24
By: Allie Millington
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The Pecan Man
- By: Cassie Dandridge Selleck
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When the police chief's son is found stabbed to death near his camp, the man Ora knows as Eddie is arrested and charged with murder. Twenty-five years later, Ora sets out to tell the truth about the Pecan Man.
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Still Thinking About this Book
- By L. O. Pardue on 08-01-16
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All the Glimmering Stars
- A Novel
- By: Mark Sullivan, Anthony and Florence Opoka - afterword
- Narrated by: Junior Nyong'o
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Anthony Opoka and Florence Okori are coming of age in Uganda in the 1990s. Outstanding students, they believe in being good humans before they are kidnapped and forced into the fanatical Lord’s Resistance Army. In a legion of young recruits, no one gets closer than Anthony to powerful messianic warlord Joseph Kony and his darkest secrets. To stay sane as he spirals through chaos, Anthony clings to his childhood lessons about being a good human. Florence’s upbringing grounds her, too, helping her keep her dreams alive even as she’s pulled deeper into the insanity of Kony’s war.
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Absolutely the best!
- By Katherine Dunigan on 06-29-24
By: Mark Sullivan, and others
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The First Ladies
- By: Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
- Narrated by: Robin Miles, Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist and an educator, and as her reputation grows she becomes a celebrity, revered by titans of business and recognized by U.S. Presidents. Eleanor Roosevelt herself is awestruck and eager to make her acquaintance.
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A Wake Up Call to history and today
- By JoeKristina Smith on 07-11-23
By: Marie Benedict, and others
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The Quarry Girls
- A Thriller
- By: Jess Lourey
- Narrated by: Jess Nahikian
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it’s not all fun and games. Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can’t forget. They’ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears—the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate.
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I can't
- By Brent Casey on 11-17-22
By: Jess Lourey
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The Boxcar Librarian
- A Novel
- By: Brianna Labuskes
- Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series—travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired. But Millie begins to suspect that the answer might instead lie with the town’s mysterious librarian, Alice Monroe.
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Historic
- By Teresa Rundell on 04-11-25
By: Brianna Labuskes
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One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Hawker
- Narrated by: Jackie Zebrowski
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.
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Mixed review
- By Shari Ring Wolf on 11-05-19
By: Olivia Hawker
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Yellow Crocus
- Yellow Crocus, Book 1
- By: Laila Ibrahim
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed mother and her distant, slave-owning father.
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A rare find, a 5 star book!
- By Kathy in CA on 02-22-15
By: Laila Ibrahim
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The Reading List
- A Novel
- By: Sara Nisha Adams
- Narrated by: Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, Paul Panting
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper. It's a list of novels that she's never heard of before. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too.
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Fabulous narrators!
- By Barbara S on 10-29-21
By: Sara Nisha Adams
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The Berry Pickers
- By: Amanda Peters
- Narrated by: Aaliya Warbus, Jordan Waunch
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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July 1962. Following in the tradition of Indigenous workers from Nova Scotia, a Mi’kmaq family arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.
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Absolutely Awful Narration
- By Anonymous User on 04-19-24
By: Amanda Peters
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Go as a River
- A Novel
- By: Shelley Read
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known.
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Great character development
- By ALB on 11-22-23
By: Shelley Read
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The Diamond Eye
- A Novel
- By: Kate Quinn
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In the snowbound city of Kiev, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son—but Hitler’s invasion of Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper—a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.
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Excellent narration!
- By Denise Diener on 04-15-22
By: Kate Quinn
Reliving the revelations about racism
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A great read for Black History Month
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Enjoyed the story of the girls friendship and how her & her brother were humble servants of God
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True Grit
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Mockingbird Summer Captured the 60s!
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A reminder of the past
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Very Good Story
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“It’s what you make of tragedy that makes you.”
This book took me a little longer to get through than most other books, even her other book which I really enjoyed and the reason I can think is the era or Corky, the main character in the book and boy, what a character she is. I have known a person or two like Corky” I think everyone has; maybe the only difference is age or maybe not. Corky is blissfully naïve even though she never seems to run out of inappropriate questions to ask. I am sure it was the time and small-town Texas but still a sad part of history.
I think everyone should have a Roy Rogers, of their own. 😉 A lot of the book is perhaps small-town America but the main event is the big Softball game at the end of the year and the terrible events that happen right after the game; lives are forever changed including Corky’s. That is the day her eyes are opened, oh, she’s still Corky and she still has a whole lot of growing up to do but she starts to get it. I Think. I love the way America, the only black player on the team for the Baptist Church always seems to run on to the field in the nick of time. I could have been friends with her easily. Pastor Pete’s last sermon is GREAT, it says a lot in only a few words.
Worth the read/listen!
Don't give up, this takes place in a different era
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Timeless
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Hoping for a sequel
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