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During WWII the U.S. was fighting for freedom while denying its black citizens their rights and freedom. In “The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights” (Roaring Brook 2014) Steve Sheinkin paints a picture of the segregated armed forces. Rather than being assigned to battle, blacks worked in the mess hall. Or worse.

At Great Lakes Naval Training there was one line in the mess hall for whites who ate upstairs, and another line for blacks who ate downstairs. The sports teams, music bands, blood banks and blood suppliers were all segregated.

When the black sailors arrived at Port Chicago near San Francisco, their job was to load ammunition—torpedo warheads and incendiary bombs—from freight cars to ships headed to the Pacific front. They received no training in how to handle the explosives. The professional civilian stevedores were horrified. Five hundred pound shells and 650 pound incendiary bombs rolled down inclined rails from freight cars to loading nets, which were in turn raised by cranes and lowered into ship holds.

The men stacked bombs one atop the other. The working conditions were chaotic and loud with clanking of metal against metal and cursing of men. Joe Small, a natural leader among the black men, took over running the winch and the duties of the petty officer, communicating with his superior (white) officers, but he was not promoted to petty officer. He did not receive the pay hike or the private room afforded the petty officer.

The inevitable huge explosion, seen and felt for miles around, blew to smithereens the 10 million pounds of explosives, boxcar, ship and all 320 men—202 of whom were black—on the waterfront. There were no surviving witnesses. Another 390, mostly black men, who fought the resulting fires, were wounded.

The accident was blamed on the black sailors. The official (white) navy report stated, “the colored personnel are neither temperamentally nor intellectually capable of handling high explosives.” No black sailor was asked to testify.

When the survivors—those not on duty at the time of the explosion—were ordered to a new site to load ammunition, they refused. 258 black men were imprisoned on a barge. Men, crowded together, long abused by segregation laws, grew angrier. Joe Small urged them to obey rules, act as a unit, and not get violent. Small asked his superiors for improved working conditions and to desegregate the base.

Instead they were court martialed. Many chose to go back to loading ammo. The group, whittled down to fifty men, were defended by a good brash young (white) lawyer, but it wasn’t enough to tip the decision of the presiding navy judge. They lost. In steps, Thurgood Marshall, working for the NAACP, appealed the case, calling their trial a frame-up. Marshall won their appeal and after serving months of hard labor, the men were released.

The Navy desegregated in 1946. President Truman ended segregation in the military in 1948. This is great readable history.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker won a Boston Globe Horn Book 2014 Honor for Nonfiction and a Parents Choice Gold Award for Poetry.

We experience the reality of rural nineteenth century Norway in “West of the Moon” (Abrams-Amulet 2014) by Margi Preus, yet we feel immersed in a land of magic. The Norwegians are Christian but are living in a world paralleling Scandinavian folktales. Superstitions are alive and alluring—with the invisible and wicked huldrefolks lurking near cradles and under bridges.

It’s not so much what the author says as what she doesn’t say that brings to life this world of awe and magic. This life is so natural to Astri and her little sister Greta, Preus doesn’t tell us about their world—we simply live it alongside of them.

Astri, about fourteen, likens herself to the girl in the folktale who is abducted by a white bear who turns out to be a prince. However, Astri’s abductor, Svaalberd or, as she calls him, goatman, is no prince. As his milkmaid, she milks goats. She says, “Oh, and shovel the snow and chop the wood and haul the wood and clean out the ashes and start the fire and rake the coals and cook the porridge and make the candles and knead the bread. All in the dark, dark, dark.” It’s wintertime.

When the goatman assaults her in her bed, Astri saves herself with the knife she keeps under her pillow. Goatman banishes her to the shed, where she discovers the odd silent Spinning Girl. Astri defends herself again against the entitled goatman. And now the picaresque quality really kicks in and the adventure takes off.

Astri takes Spinning Girl and finds her way back to the farm where she rescues Greta from her greedy aunt. Now they must find a way to get to America where her father has gone to make a better life. And on the road they discover the goatman, Svaalberd dying, probably, from the wounds Astri inflicted on him.

Greta and Astri give him a funeral right on the road. Astri says, “I know Svaalberd was a mean old man, but what made him thus? Did he have that hump as a youngster? That would make for a hard life, wouldn’t it?”

Greta responds, “This is a very strange sermon.” Preus is a master at magic and wisdom and dry wit. And metaphor. Astri says, “The snags in my heart are so tangled and deep, I feel them there, twisted little knots that can’t be undone.”

Astri leaves Spinning Girl at a kind farmer’s home, where she steals a horse. Astri and Greta ride to the sea. One snags a ticket and the other stows away, they both contract cholera and are visited by Death. They meet other Norwegians on their way to America as they make their way.

Preus’ story is inspired by the diary of her great great grandmother, Linka, the young wife of a Lutheran pastor, who met a wild girl all alone crossing from Norway to America in 1850 and asked if she might serve her as a maid.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker won a Boston Globe Horn Book 2014 Honor for Nonfiction and a Parents Choice Gold Award for Poetry.

Cadence Sinclair Eastman is 18 at the beginning of “We Were Liars” (Delacorte 2014) by E. Lockhart, but her actual story begins “summer fifteen” when she is 15. The blueblood Sinclair family own Beechwood Island and all converge there every summer. Her grandparents reign in one mansion and their three middle-aged daughters squabble over the other three island mansions.

The story centers on the next generation—Cadence and her cousins. Cadence is the eldest by a couple weeks and it is she who will inherit Beechwood. She speaks sparely, as in, “…my father ran off with some woman he loved more than us.” When he actually leaves she says, “Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest.” What? You sputter. Then a few lines later, “Mummy snapped. She said to get hold of myself.” And you realize that Cadence speaks in dramatic adolescent metaphor. Perfect.

About the two next oldest cousins, only weeks younger than she, “Johnny, he is bounce, effort and snark.” “Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain.” Then the nephew of her Aunt Carrie’s Indian boyfriend comes. “Gat seemed spring-loaded…He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.” An Indian boy (and his uncle) enter this white white family.

The accident happened summer fifteen but we don’t know what that accident was. With her headaches, depression, visits to endless doctors and selective amnesia, Cadence cannot tell us what happened that summer. Against her will, she is taken to Europe by her father when she is 16.

We know she fell in love with Gat during summer fifteen. But he doesn’t even answer her emails. Neither do Johnny nor Mirren, but internet service on their remote island is not great. They’d have to take one of the boats across the waters into town. Not only is she depressed but vomiting and hugging the cold floor tiles throughout her European trip. The doctors can find no medical reasons. They say, give her time. Let her remember on her own. Let her remember the accident.

She is sent off to her father for the next summer and the next, but she convinces them to let her spend 4 weeks on Beechwood summer eighteen. She wants to remember the accident. Her cousins—all of them, including “the littles”—are instructed to go easy on Cadence. And throughout that summer she begins to uncover the accident. She begs her cousins to remind her, but mostly she has to figure it out herself.

Eventually we learn that during summer fifteen, her grandmother Tippy died. Her grandfather is slipping in and out of dementia. Cadence rebels against her mother and aunts who vie for all the lovely things that were Tippy’s. The three mothers fight over the three mansions. Cadence gives away everything she owns—including her beloved books.

Through the course of summer eighteen, she remembers. And it knocked me over. If you are older than “young adult,” that’s okay. Read this.

Patricia Hruby Powell’s new book Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker won a Boston Globe Horn Book 2014 Honor for Nonfiction and a Parent’s Choice Gold Award for Poetry.