For readers who like Corrie and Zack, I tell them, “Just wait till you meet Mayme and Katie!” They are the two main characters in the Shenandoah Sisters series, and its sequel Carolina Cousins. Shenandoah Sisters is told in Mayme’s voice, a black slave girl of fourteen. Katie, daughter of a nearby plantation owner, is about the same age. The parents of both girls are killed by marauders at the end of the Civil War.

Thrust together by tragic circumstances, the white girl and black girl must depend on each other for survival. Knowing their lives are in danger, and that if they are found they will be taken away and who knows what will happen to them, they come up with a daring plan. They will keep the plantation of Katie’s family up and running, not letting any of the neighbors or people in town know that Katie’s parents are dead. Thus begins their adventure, pretending that all is well on the plantation known as Rosewood.

From the opening of Angels Watching Over Me:

I been making stories from before I can remember. As near as I can recollect, it started so as to keep my little brother from crying. If I could just get his attention on something besides the hunger in his stomach for a minute or two, he’d shush up and start listening. Then I’d have to think up something else mighty quick. And something after that…and string it all together with interesting expressions and in different voices, so he’d keep looking at me with those big wide eyes of his and keep listening and not cry again. Before I knew it, I was spinning out tales that’d keep him quiet for hours, having no idea what was gonna come next but just making it up as I went along. Then the next day I would string along some more where I left off. Sometimes I’d look up and there’d be our mama listening too, with a kind of peculiar look on her face to hear what I was telling Samuel.

“Where’d you hear dat story from, chil’?” she asked me once. I said I didn’t hear it from nowhere. I’d just made it up to keep Samuel still.

“What about all them little sayin’s you add now en then?” I shrugged. I hadn’t really thought about it till then. “Where’d you learn those?” she asked. “No place, mama,” I said. “But yo’re too young t’ know sich things.” “I can’t help it, mama. They just come out when I’m telling the story.” Then she said something I never forgot, and it’s helped me keep my head up through some hard times, and I’ve had a heap of them.

“Well, chil’,” she said, “this here’s a hard life we lead. We never know what’s gonna happen to any of us from day to day. So you keep tellin’ yor stories,” she said, “en you pay attention to what’s in dat head of yors. ‘Cause the good Lord’s given you a gift most folks ain’t got.” I nodded, but I only about half understood what she was trying to say. It takes a lot of years before young folks can really understand what their mamas and papas tell them when they’re young. Anyhow, that’s how my story telling all got started.

That’s almost too many years ago to remember very clear. What I remember most clearly starts when I was fourteen. That’s how old I was when I first laid eyes on Katie. We weren’t so very different than any two other girls, except of course that one of us was white and the other colored. And that we lived through the last part of the war together.

For those of you who didn’t know Katie, and who may not know me either…my name is Mary Ann Jukes. All my life, folks have just called me Mayme. Okay, then, I reckon now I’m about ready to start. As I begin, I’m going to ask you to send your imaginations back to another time, a long, long time ago when this country fought a war with itself—to the year 1861.

And later in the story…

Katie lay a while as she came awake, then sat up and climbed to her feet. She tried to push up the cellar door. But it was closed tight and wouldn’t budge. Something was blocking it. With all the strength she had, Katie struggled to raise the trap door a tiny crack. A chink of light came through. She pushed harder and harder, then gave one last shove with all her might. A weight gave way as something rolled off it. The door swung up and open on creaking hinges. “Mommy…mommy!” cried Katie. “Mommy, where are you!”

Nothing but silence answered the dying echo of her voice. Katie took another step and poked her head up, then stepped the rest of the way into the living room.

Looking first in the opposite direction from the cellar door which leaned against the dead body of her father where she had shoved it from blocking her way, destruction was everywhere. Half the windows in the house were broken. The furniture was upset. Pictures and vases and plates and glassware had been shattered and strewn about, tables and chairs overturned. The china cabinet wasn’t the only case on the floor. Several bookshelves had suffered the same fate. Books and pieces of china were scattered all through the family room. In little more than a whimper, Katie tried to call out to her mother again. But by now her voice was nearly gone.

She did not know what had happened. Her’s was not an imagination capable of even dreaming such horror. But the sight was enough to fill her with mute shock. What confronted her sensitive innocence now was a hurricane of death and destruction.

Katie’s face went to ashes and her knees began to buckle. Her stomach gagged once or twice, but it had nothing inside to throw up. An icy chill seized heart and brain together, more despairing than any cold she had ever felt. She began to tremble, though not with cold but from sudden desolation. She stood staring, immobile, incapable of movement, unable to utter a sound, unconscious that she was now an orphan…unconscious of anything.

She only stood, mouth gaping, face white, trembling, unaware that even her few movements across the floor had already stained her slippers and nightgown with the blood of her proud southern heritage.

How long she stood in a stupor of shock, she didn’t know. Death was all around. Blood—some dried black, some in pools so thick it was still red—was splattered everywhere. Suddenly Katie heard footsteps behind her. In the midst of the awful silence, the sound frightened her out of her wits.

She nearly leapt out of her skin and spun around. The instinct toward survival suddenly awoke. Her muscles tensed in readiness to flee. But just as quickly she hesitated. There stood a lanky black girl near her own age that she had never seen before.

That girl was me.