'Lucid and magnificent.'James McBride, author of The Color of Water Desperate to find her sister, yet afraid of betraying her mother and herself to some unknown danger, Birdie must learn to navigate the white world and the pains of adolescence - until she is finally prepared to set off in search of her sister.

Passing as the daughter and wife of a deceased Jewish professor, Birdie and her mother drive through the Northeast, eventually making their home in New Hampshire. And the next morning, in the belief that the Feds are after them, Birdie and her mother have left everything behind: their house and possessions, their friends, and - most disturbing of all - their identity. One night, through the attic windows Birdie watches her father and his girlfriend drive away with Cole - they have gone to Brazil, she will later learn, where her father hopes for a racial equality he will never have in the States. At night the sisters watch mysterious men arrive at their house with bundles shaped like rifles. Their father moves in with his black girlfriend, who won't even look at Birdie, and their mother seems to be more and more out of control, giving her life over to the movement. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness.

The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: while Cole looks like her father's daughter, Birdie appears to be white. (Feb.Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the civil rights movement in Boston in the 1970s. If the story has didactic overtones, Senna's shaping of '70s detail and convincing development of her appealing protagonists more than justify its message. Senna's observations about the racial divide in America are often fierce but always complex and humane.

After her father and Cole move to Brazil and the feds start to investigate her mother's mysterious political activities, Birdie and her mother go underground, posing as the wife and daughter of sympathetic professor David Goldman. Birdie, pale enough to be mistaken for white, stays close to Mom, mourning her estrangement from Dad and especially Cole-her mirror, protector and secret sharer. Cole, whose complexion is darker than her sister's, gets caught up in her new, black nationalist Nkrumah School in Roxbury and in her father's new life with a black girlfriend. Finally, Mom and Dad split up one time too many, and no amount of Al Green records, Chinese noodles and slow dancing can bring them back together. As children, Birdie and her sister, Cole, create their own secret language-Elemeno-to ward off the growing tension between their black father and their white mother. Set in 1970s Boston, this impressively assured debut avoids the usual extremes in its depiction of racial tension.

Caucasia book