The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

By Mary Helen Stefaniak

Book Overview

Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new, well-traveled young schoolteacher turns a small Georgia town upside down. Miss Grace Spivey believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her ten-volume set of The Thousand Nights and a Night . The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad bazaar. Miss Spivey transforms the lives of everyone around her: Gladys's older brother Force (with his movie-star looks), her pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs' African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South. Populated by unforgettable characters--including three impressive camels-- The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia rides a magic carpet from a segregated schoolroom in Georgia to the banks of the Tigris (and back again) in an entrancing feat of storytelling.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393063100
• ISBN13: 9780393063103
• Release Date: September 2010
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.6" x 9.6"