Keith Frohreich

Blackberries Are Red When Green Keith Frohreich

In less than a month in 1960 two murders traumatize the sleepy village of Adams Creek in Northcentral Indiana. Over the three years leading up to the murders, young Kurt Baumann's world had been rocked by the loss of his dad, his best friend, and his precious dog, leading him to doubt the existence of God. A year after losing his father, a retired Pullman Porter, and a founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Dutch Clemons, moved into a small shack across the river from the small Baumann farm. Change colored the air. Kurt now had a new friend, a father figure, and a self-educated historian, who disrupted and enlivened Kurt's segregated life with tales around the supper table, and while lolling the day away bass fishing down the riverbank. Sharing the farm with his mom and big brother, the family forged ahead on hard work, meager income, and the mother's faith. Blackberries Are Red When Green is a story about coming-of-age, the slow arc of racial change, and a place time has forgotten.