A Heart Divided (26 page)

And Jack.
He will be at Juilliard this fall.
His mother is not happy about this.
She’s not happy that we’re still together, either.
But she loves him anyway.
That,
I have learned,
is what mothers do.
People say that high school love never lasts.
People are wrong.

Of all the things that Redford is to me,
most of all,
it is—will always be—
Jack’s hometown.
This is where I met him and
this is the place he loves and
this is the place where
I
learned to love
so passionately I couldn’t even breathe.
And what it feels like
to hurt to the bone.
My writing teacher, Marcus,
told me,
“You can’t write what you don’t know.”
Well, now you’ve seen the play
I finally wrote.
Judge for yourself.

A long time ago,
my mother
embroidered a pillow for me
that says:
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.
I thought
the purpose of my life
was to become a playwright.
I still want that.
But I don’t think it’s my
purpose
anymore.
Purpose is:
Who you touch.
How you change the world.
The good you leave behind.

I can honestly say that
when we drive away from Redford
I will look back at that monument
and see it forever changed
by the good
my sister
left behind.
And I
will be
smiling
through
my
tears.

-CURTAIN-

Redford and History

If Redford, Tennessee, were to exist, we envision it as being between the real-life towns of Brentwood and Franklin, just south of Nashville. We take liberty in making Redford a county seat; it would actually be in Williamson County. The equivalence described in Redford County between white and slave populations at the outbreak of the Civil War is similar to that in Williamson County. The bloody Civil War engagement we set in Redford is fictitious, but is inspired by the 1864 battle at Franklin, which exacted a horrifying human toll. The facts of the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins as depicted in Reverend Roberts’s monologue “1961” are accurate. In
Nashville today, major city facilities are named for Z. Alexander Looby and Mayor Ben West.

A Heart Divided, the Play

Within Kate’s play, if a character is mentioned in the narrative or is specifically tied to the internal action of the story, we wrote the monologue. If the person is someone whom Kate interviewed for context or commentary, the monologue is excerpted from a real interview that we conducted for this book. We changed some locations for dramatic purposes. We were not able to use all the actual interviews we conducted, though each was fascinating in its own right. In addition to Jeremy Epps, Professor Anthony Blasi, Christopher Sullivan, and Reverend Frederick Taylor, we thank Nashville songwriter and pastor Joel Emerson, author Don Hinkle, Tennessee river catfish guide Phil King, Charles Kimbrough of the Nashville office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Professor Reavis Mitchel of Fisk University (Nashville), and Maggi Vaughn, poet laureate of the state of Tennessee, for their willingness to talk to us. While we gladly grant permission for classroom use of Kate’s play, all other rights are reserved, including dramatic performance rights.

Cherie Bennett
and
Jeff Gottesfeld
met in 1987 when both lived in New York City. They moved to Nashville in 1990. After nearly a decade in Tennessee, they now live in Los Angeles with their son. They have collaborated on fiction, plays, and other writing projects. Bennett’s
Life in the Fat Lane
was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; their widely produced play
Anne Frank and Me
had a successful off-Broadway run. For more information, visit them at
www.cheriebennett.com
.

Published by
Delacorte Press
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

Text copyright © 2004 by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

The trademark Delacorte Press is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.

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www.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bennett, Cherie.

A heart divided / Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld.

p. cm.

Summary: When sixteen-year-old Kate, an aspiring playwright, moves from New Jersey to attend high school in the South, she becomes embroiled in a controversy to remove the school’s Confederate flag symbol.

eISBN: 978-0-307-55665-3

[1. High schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Moving, Household—Fiction.
4. Flags—Confederate States of America—Fiction. 5. Racism—Fiction. 6. Race
relations—Fiction. 7. Theater—Fiction. 8. Southern States—Fiction.]

I. Gottesfeld, Jeff. II. Title.

PZ7.B43912He 2004

[Fic]—dc21

2003010031

March 2004

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