Growing Up White

On his 59th birthday, Jacob Stevens, a transplanted southerner who grew up in the Jim Crow South now living in the Pennsylvania Laurel Highlands, is invited to attend his 40th high school reunion. Jacob, who married a northerner and adopted three African-American children, realizes that the reunion committee, however, neglected to invite the African-American half of his class. This sparks an avalanche of painful nostalgia as he attempts to cope with his own desire to return to the South and attend this racist reunion. Clearly Stobaugh knows his material as in his day-to-day life he is a pastor as well as quite a gifted writer. San Francisco Book Review James P. Stobaugh is a Pastor and was a Merrill Fellow at Harvard University Divinity School.