You got a whole lot to do before you over on this side. And you, Lena, got the power to do something with your craziness.' This world you living in can be so mixed up, so backwards, that not fitting into it, being what some folks call crazy, is a blessing. Sometimes it's the only thing that protects you. 'For God's sake, baby, just 'cause you see a few ghosts and such, you think you crazy? What you think the rest of us- those that come before you, those that's living now- done been through? Don't you think we bout crazy too? All us colored women in this here country crazy as betsy bugs. Ansa's thorough and affectionate portrait marks her as a writer of both promise and achievement.'Lena, don't you know you ain't never been alone? No matter how bad it got, there was always somebody, dead or alive, trying to help you.' Readers get a view of middle-class black small-town life in the relatively placid mid-century, a time when a grandmother scorns the black families who vacation at the beach, and where a little girl often feels her life is dictated solely by demands that she keep her hair dry and combed. Following Lena's first friendships, her years at school, her observations of her parents' sometimes stormy relationship, her grief at her grandmother's death, Ansa beautifully renders Lena's stable, well-off world. Despite her extraordinary talent, Lena is most memorable for the ordinariness of her everyday life. Considered 'special' because she was born with a caul, believed to bestow sight into the future, Lena learns as a toddler that her special powers have more to do with the past: she can see and talk with ghosts. Born in 1949 in a private blacks-only hospital in rural Georgia, Lena is the third child and longed-for first daughter of Nellie and Jonah, who own the local bar and liquor store. Irven, Willowridge High School, Sugarland, TX, In this engaging coming-of-age novel by a new black writer, young Lena McPherson leads a charmed life, secure in her family and in the world Ansa evokes. The supernatural elements are well blended into the novel, adding to the richness of the fiction. Ansa's dialogue is realistic, and her characters are colorful.

Besides the human characters, Lena also learns to deal with apparitions that only she can see, such as Rachel, a young slave who gives Lena insight into what slavery was like and the emotional effects it had on the individual. Young adults are sure to relate to Lena as she grows up with her family, her peers, and the other adults who frequent her parents' successful bar and liquor store business. Born in Georgia in the late 1950s, Lena McPherson was special at birth-she was born with a caul or veil over her face, indicating the presence of magical and psychic powers.

YA- A coming-of-age novel with ethnic and supernatural threads that weave reality with the mystical.

Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa