Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't.

It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. He is as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a Jew

While gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon meets and becomes friends with Cecilia Goodwin, the Black girl. They have much in common. While sitting together on her porch swing—a Southern tradition—they talk about the Civil Rights movement, literature, the looming Vietnam War, and, of course, football. Eventually, they realize that they are romantically drawn to each other. They know, however, that they must keep their relationship a secret. That is until they are both provoked to put their romance on public display, to Simon's mother's delight, but to the angry epithets of others. This is the year that Governor George Wallace declared, “Segregation forever!”

Told by Simon many years later, this coming-of-age Southern novel foretells the growing Civil Rights Movement, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and America's deepening involvement in the Vietnam War, all while Simon's parents' marriage falls apart. Simon, once a bit naive, learns about small-town Alabama corruption, nepotism, and the xenophobia of patriarchs of the Confederacy. Even so, Alabama remains a state that he looks back on with fond memories, as it was a time when his experiences--and falling in love--changed him forever.

Excerpt:

The first time I saw Cecilia was outside the Legrange Theater in Pickettville. I had gone to watch the matinee of the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, with my only friend at the time, Tony Kouris, who was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, but whose family had moved to Pickettville because his father had taken a job at Fort Rucker, a nearby Army base, as the manager of the officers club. My father had also taken a job on the base, but as an advisor to the Army's aviation branch.

The owner of the Legrange, Mrs. Legrange, a matronly woman, had folds of white-as-death skin under her chin. She always wore a choker of jade or some other colorful gem. The smell of what I now recognize as Port wine often issued from her office, blown out into the lobby by the roar of a window-mounted air-conditioner.

On that hot July day, Tony and I bought our tickets and stood in line, waiting to enter the theater. Across from us, standing before a dilapidated exterior door that led up to the balcony, were the Blacks—called Negroes or coloreds back then.

I wasn't used to two lines for two races entering a theater. I had often gone to movies in St. Paul but had never seen anything like this.

Standing in the line before the box office, I couldn't stop myself from looking across the way, to where the Blacks were, confused about why they used a separate entrance. Tony must have noticed this and said to me, “Is this the way it is up north?”

“No,” I said, “it's not.”

“They mix with us?” he asked.

This was such a peculiar way of speaking that I hadn't understood him. He tilted his head, “Them, over there, with us, in the same line?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Get used to the way it is down here,” he said.

It was at about that time that Cecilia caught my attention. She was wearing a calico print dress, her hair was in that bun, and she had on those trademark gold frame eyeglasses. She was small but had a commanding, intellectual presence. I said, “She's cute.”

Tony stared at me. “You're in the South,” he said. “Stick with your own kind.”