The opening scene tells me a lot about Benny and Ceelee. It doesn't matter what you want for yourself or for your children. This is a world in which skin color dictates many things: how much you get paid, where you live, what kind of job you are able to take, even how well you get treated by others.

Frierson takes the reader back to the late 1960s in the South where there is hope of things changing, but a lot of blood, sweat and tears will be expended to make things better. But society and the stupid notions of color, race, and what should and shouldn't be done managed to stand in their way for fifteen and more years. Is friendship too high a price to pay to be Plumville? Is love? Will Benjamin and Coralee become who Plumville raised them to be, or who they were born to be?īeing Plumville is a love story about two people who knew they were each other's happy endings from a very young age. The reunion forces the pair and those around them to examine the consequences of following the status quo versus following their hearts. However, fifteen years later during the turbulent 1960s, Benjamin and Coralee are reunited, and despite their upbringing, neither are able to deny what they had in their innocent youth, nor suppress the desire to rekindle it-maybe even into something more.

Such is the case for Benjamin Drummond and Coralee Simmons, two best friends separated during childhood because Benjamin is white, Coralee is black, and relationships between the two races are unspoken in its taboo. You're given them from birth, and anything that could possibly make you break them is removed from your life-even if it's your best friend. Living in the small, southern town of Plumville is effortless, seamless, and safe, if you follow the rules.

Being Plumville by Savannah J. Frierson