Time Pieces

About this book

Time Pieces is a quietly beautiful coming-of-age story from a master storyteller. Eleven-year-old Valena, her family, and dog live in rural Ohio, where she and her cousin Melinda share experiences that include seeing the aurora borealis, surviving a tornado, and going to an amazing circus. Yet Valena lives in both the present and the past as she struggles with racism in her daily life and listens to and learns from her mother's tales of her family's proud history. Moving backward and forward in time, these pieces of Valena's life blend to form an extraordinary portrait of the ties that bind her family together over generations. Drawing from her own family history, Virginia Hamilton has deftly woven together moments in time, creating a seamless and poignant masterpiece.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Virginia Hamilton

12 March 1936 – 19 February 2002

Virginia Hamilton was born and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She attended Antioch College on a scholarship, and then transferred to Ohio State University in 1956 to study literature and creative writing. In 1958 she moved to New York City where she worked odd jobs, studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research, and wrote. Hamilton married in 1960 and became a full-time writer. In 1967 she published her first book, Zeely, published in 1967, which won numerous awards, including the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 1969, Hamilton and her family …