Mirror Girls

Gr 7 Up–In 1936 Eureka, GA, infant twin girls, one light and one described as “pecan brown,” tragically lose their parents and are separated by their grandparents. Seventeen years later, Charlene Yates is escorting her dying grandmother to Eureka to fulfill her final wish. Charlie has grown into a community organizer with a strong sense of justice and what it means to be a Black woman in her New York world—but she’s learning that being Black in the South is something entirely new. Meanwhile, Magnolia Heathwood has grown up in Eureka, raised as a white woman with abusive white Grandmother Blanche in the haunted Heathwood estate. As Blanche dies, she burdens Magnolia with the secret of her sister and her biracial identity, coupled with the demand that she keep passing so Blanche can have a white heir. The reveal triggers a curse that robs Magnolia of her reflection, and the cure requires the sisters to confront their fraught past—together. Readers will be kept on edge as Charlie and Magnolia navigate their newfound bond while confronting their wholly different lives and dreams, all in the midst of ghastly supernatural happenings and social turmoil. This hypnotic, compelling text holds a reflection up to America’s violent and recurring history. Black pain at the hands of white violence is a foundational part of the plot, and McWilliams does not shy from describing gruesome wounds that Black folks carry—those living and dead. The end is somewhat open while providing a satisfying conclusion for the narrative arc.