Devil on My Heels

by Joyce McDonald

Book Overview

It's 1959 in Benevolence, Florida, and life is as sweet as a Valencia orange for 15-year-old Dove Alderman. Whether she's sipping cherry Cokes with her girlfriends and listening to the Everly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385731078
• ISBN13: 9780385731072
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 13 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 12

Customer Reviews

Evil can lurk just beneath the surface of anyone's life

At 15, Dove Alderman enjoys a comfortable life. Sure, her mother died when she was only four, but her father Lucas provides a good home, and they have Delia, a black housekeeper who is just about a substitute parent. But it's 1959 and the South, meaning racial relations are volatile. Now that they're older, Dove is no longer allowed to associate with Gator, a black childhood friend who works in the Alderman orange groves. Gator is attracting attention from many white residents in town, because he's speaking up about the terrible conditions for many workers. Also...could he have a white girlfriend? If anyone found out, Dove knows, he could be killed. A rash of mysterious fires around town has made everyone nervous. Yet Dove continues to believe they are accidents and lightning strikes; until she begins to understand there might be something more sinister at work. McDonald does a beautiful job, skillfully weaving serious topics of racial history with Dove's first romance and other typical young adult issues. Readers will feel compelled to find out what happens to the residents of this tiny Florida town.

Devil on My Heels: An Honors MAH Review

The novel "Devil on My Heels" by Joyce McDonald is a great outline of the post-WWII time period. It showed how racism still played a major part in society. For example, "When he gets about two feet from me, he leans forward and spits right in my face. 'Nigger lover,' he says" (238). Back before the Civil Rights Movement, white people treated colored people with much disrespect. This is reflected in the novel by the way Travis Waite and the Klan beat up Gator (Dove's colored friend). They automatically assume that Gator is the cause of all the troubles Travis Waite had been going through because none of his workers had shown up for work. In addition, McDonald consistntly brings up the point that a colored-white relationship would be out of the question through Rosemary and Gator's secret relationship. Apparently, during this time, if a colored man was in a relationship with a white woman, they would get beaten or maybe even killed. Therefore, Rosemary and Gator's relationship was kept very secretive. Another post-WWII issue McDonald successfully tackles in this novel is the Ku Klux Klan. She does a great job of proving that the Klan caused many disturbances; specific to this novel was setting fires to migrant camps. As Dove is searching for answers to who has been setting these fires, she learns that her own father is a member of the Klan: "I am holding a blue-green card with the letters KKK at the top. And there, at the bottom, is my dad's signature" (155). From here on out, Dove's purpose is to get down to the bottom of this and try to stop these terrible things from happening again. At the end of the novel, everything plays out and Dove makes a difference by standing up for Gator, although this does not end in the KKK's cease to exist. McDonald does a great job of showing how the Ku Klux Klan played a major role in society after WWII. Overall, this book does an excellent job of informing the reader how life after WWII would have been. What is the truth and how do you know? Proven this novel, it is almost impossible to tell what is and isn't the truth. Many times, Dove would ask questions, and wouldn't recieve answers. She constanly asked Chase if he knew anything about the fires or what had been going on at the migrant camps. Just about everytime she asked these questions, Chase would veer away from the subject. Therefore, whenever he did answer her questions, she could never really tell if he was being truthful or not. Also apparent in the novel, Dove had troubles getting the truth out of her father. He would go to secret meetings late at night and not tell her what he was doing or where he was going: "'You take off, don't tell me where you're going. Most of the time I don't know where the heck you are'" (179). When she later found out that these were Klan meetings her father had been attending, Dove was infuriated. She felt as if she could no longer trust her father without second guessing if he was really being t

Review for Devil on My Heels

Devil on My Heels is a book that displays both racism and loyalty. It takes place in Benevolence, Florida in 1959. Fifteen-year-old Dove spends her time in the Benevolence Baptist Cemetery reading poems to dead boys, since they "listen and don't walk away" like the other boys. As a child she played in her father's orange groves with Chase Tully, and Gator, and African American orphan. Suddenly, there are fires breaking out in the groves, both the Mexican and African American are blamed. Dove then discovers that both her father and Chase Tully are part of the Ku Klux Klan, which leads to Delia, their African American housekeeper, no longer work for them. The racial hatred leads Travis Waite to beat Gator up, and beat his face with a belt buckle. Gator starts going out with a white woman, and stirs up trouble. Dove's relationship with her dad will never be the same after she found out about the Ku Klux Klan, and especially after she finds out her father had been hiding a shoe box full of pictures of Dove's mother. Soon everything returns to normal, but Travis is left without a job, and Delia will receive money. This books demonstrates how people can change with the influence of other people, but can overcome this influence from the help of good people.

Devil on My Heels=AMAZING

It is 1959 and Dove Alderman is white. She has a father who cares about her and he also happens to own 700 acres of orange grove. She has Delia, a mother-like housekeeper that makes delicious food. And she has Chase Tully, a childhood friend that starts to become more than a friend. Her life is perfect, right? Well, it was perfect until she started to question the uprising of the black pickers and the strange fires that were happening all over her hometown of Benevolence, Florida. Dove is not the only one who has noticed it, and the people of Benevolence are beginning to suspect something much bigger than a fire is soon going to break out, especially with the new girl, Rosemary, stirring up trouble. Devil on My Heels is a perfect book for teenaged girls because of the historic base entangled with a love story of Chase and Dove. There also may be chemistry between a black boy and a white girl. The novel quickly jumps to life as soon as you open the book with the realism of 1959. Even though this is a longer book (around 300 pages) it draws your attention right away to the realistic characters and the harsh setting of the South. Joyce McDonald creates the perfect scene of what life was like in the south with the strong sense of racism and the colorful imagery. McDonald creates the feel and tension throughout the book with remarks like "'This nigger bothering you, sugar?'" (35) from the white folks in the town. She also makes unexpected twists in the story, so you don't stereotype the races. She writes the book from Dove's point-of-view, which helps the reader experience the lifestyle back then. I felt so close to Dove that I cried when she felt pain and my heart quickened when "... [Chase] rested his free hand on top of mine" (McDonald 64). Devil on My Heels takes you through an unforgettable journey about racism through the eyes of a teenaged girl. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has an eye for historical fiction and likes a little adventure. This novel reminded me a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird and I thought both books were amazing and very accurate for the time period.

A great story

This book has everything -- mystery, suspense, romance -- and a great story too. I felt like I was in a time machine, back to Florida in the 1950s. I learned about racial attitudes of the time, but the author didn't preach. She got her ideas across with a great story. They should make it into a movie!