The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones

When 15-year-old Ethan Harper is banished to Ellison, Alabama, for the summer, he keeps a lid on his rage. Ethan’s white father has told him there is no excuse for punching a classmate back in Washington State and thinks three months with Ethan’s Aunt Cora and Uncle Robert will teach him a lesson. But Ethan is a biracial kid, and it’s 1955. The civil rights movement is just beginning to mobilize against Jim Crow laws, and the Klu Klux Klan metes out its own brand of vigilante justice. Ethan is the only “coloured” person in an all-white Southern town, and he is rudely awakened to the brutal and sometimes violent determination of the townspeople to keep their community pure.

It’s a recipe for a miserable summer, but then Ethan meets Juniper Starfish Jones, the town odd-ball, who has “a volcano of bright red hair” and a determination to recruit Ethan as a partner in her “invincible summer”. Together, the two create an ambitious list of activities to bring them joy and adventure, from rolling down grassy hills to cycling pell-mell through forest paths to the lake. As their friendship grows, Ethan begins to see some good in the town that has shunned him, but he can’t ignore the forces that pull them apart and eventually threaten their lives.

In The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones, Daven McQueen creates a personal experience of history through the eyes of an innocent. Race is not an overt issue in Ethan’s hometown, but, when he arrives in Ellison, the racism is blatant and unapologetic. Early in his stay, Ethan meets a family on the street, and they recoil: “The woman moved suddenly, one hand gripping her husband’s arm, the other flying to her purse; her son melted into the rustling folds of her dress.” He becomes aware that he is the only non-white in the town, and the stares are curious but disgusted, “familiar in a deep, ugly way.” For the first time, Ethan openly confronts what it means to be Black in America. He soon learns to keep his head down, but even stepping back won’t protect him from the attention of two town bullies.

Ethan is passive in the early part of the book, a sharp contrast to Juniper, who is irrepressible and impulsive. McQueen effectively uses that contrast to demonstrate that perspective depends on skin colour. Juniper, Ethan’s father, and his aunt and uncle are all white, and they do not understand the vulnerability of people of colour. When Ethan visits his Black mother in Montgomery, Alabama, she tells him, “Sometimes you need to be angry” because things won’t change without anger. “Your father means well,” she says, “but he just can’t understand. He’ll be innocent till the day he dies” (p. 203). Juniper acknowledges that she, too, can fight the injustice she is only now seeing because “people look at me different than they look at you. I’m safe in my skin” (p. 208).

Through the crucible of the hot, violent summer, Ethan learns to speak up. Aunt Cora, Uncle Robert and Ethan’s father all learn to look at events through his eyes, and their awakening is a promise of change.

McQueen’s prose in The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones occasionally veers into excessive description, and the exaggerated character of Juniper sometimes stretches credibility, but, overall, the author tells her story deftly, especially considering this is a debut novel. Ethan is a believable character, and his fear and confusion are utterly plausible. Historical details of the period – tv shows, clothing styles and music, as well as prevailing attitudes – add to the period’s authenticity. The underlying message of the story – that friendship is possible despite differences, and that everyone has the right to respect – is one that resonates as much today as it did in the Alabama of 1955.