Bennett, Cherie & Gottesfeld, Jeff. A heart divided.

Random House, Delacorte. 309p. c2004. 0-385-32749-8. $15.95. JS *

Bennett and Gottesfeld have collaborated on fiction, plays, and other writing projects. Bennett is the author of the ALA Best Book for YAs, Life in the Fat Lane, and together they wrote the play and novel Anne Frank and Me. They have lived in the NY city area and also in Nashville, so they have solid knowledge about the setting of this novel.

Kate is the narrator. She is a smart, creative 16-year-old who has been active in the theater and yearns to be a playwright. She and her family (liberal mother and father, younger sister Portia) move from New Jersey to a town named Redford, close to Nashville, Tennessee. It seems like a completely different country, and Kate feels like a foreigner. Soon, however Kate meets Jack Redford, the son of the first family of the city, and the two of them fall in love, sharing a serious interest in the theatre--Jack wants to be an actor. She also meets Nikki, the daughter of one of the black ministers in town and civil rights activist, and becomes a volunteer in the quest to demand a vote in the high school to change the school team name from The Rebels and to remove the Confederate flag as their emblem. This is where the heart divided comes in: and it is really Jack who is most divided. His ancestors were Civil War heroes who were also slave owners--this is his heritage. He isn't proud of it, but it is his history.

Many characters are introduced as Kate attempts to write a play about the divisions in the town--African Americans and white people from several generations with varying political viewpoints. While the racial/cultural divide is always in the background, the action of the novel encompasses familiar and popular YA themes: new girl in school; romantic love; undue interference of a parent in a teen's life (Jeff's mother forces him to transfer to a military academy to keep him away from Kate and her liberal, Northern influences); jealousy of Jeff's former girlfriend; young Portia's awkward adjustments to middle school and first boyfriends. The tensions in the town caused by the Confederate flag/rebel controversy get worse and worse, until tragedy results.

The final 80 pages of the novel is a section called "A Heart Divided; A Performance Piece," written by Kate and performed by Jeff and Nikki. (This is inspired by the work of Anna Deveare Smith, especially her performance piece, Fires in the Mirror.) Voices from the body of the novel appear in this play and we can see how Kate has mentally and emotionally processed her experience of this Southern town and its people. The performance piece is an amazingly creative work, and so is the novel as a whole. YAs from all regions of the US will understand the struggles of Kate and Jack. And all who are interested in the theater and in creative writing will especially enjoy this intelligent contribution to YA literature. Claire Rosser, KLIATT