As Cassie and her brothers look on horrified, he grabs a gun and shoots Mr. Embarrassed in front of his customers, and furious with Tom, Wallace takes a stand of his own. He calls Wallace “John” again, this time before an audience of lounging white men. Tom discovers when he returns to the store for the tobacco he forgot earlier. He tells Cassie and the others: “I figures I’m close ‘nough to meetin’ my Maker, it don’t much matter he likes it or not.” Tom went along with it for years, but now he’s decided to confront his old friend. But when he came back from Vicksburg and opened his store, he expected Tom to call him “Mr. Wallace said he’d never forget what Tom had done for him.

Tom how he had the nerve to challenge Wallace, and the old fisherman explains that, when Wallace was a boy, he saved his life not once, but twice. Tom’s order but warns him never to call him John again. “Glad ya finally done brought yourself on in here! These here boys-a yours ain’t been none too friendly.” Tom does what no other black in their rural Mississippi town would have dared to do in that year of 1933: He calls the white owner of the store, Mr. As the children watch through the open door of the Wallace general store, Mr.

Tom Bee, an old fisherman and a friend to Cassie and her three brothers, Stacey, Christopher-John, and Little Man. But here Cassie is only 9 years old and plays a relatively minor role.

Taylor including the Newbery Award-winning “Roll of thunder, Hear My Cry,” reappears in Taylor’s new story. Cassie Logan, the outspoken black heroine of three earlier novels by Mildred D.

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