Summer of No Rain by Laura Hunter (2022)

As a timid biracial girl growing up in Sweetwater, Alabama during the 1960s, Margaret Ann Odom’s childhood was all but pleasant. Constantly targeted by her peers due to her different texture of hair, and struggling to live up to her M’dear’s expectations, Margaret's life becomes worse when Claire Whitehurst appears at her home insisting she is due for a sudden medical examination and a series of injections. Thinking her life couldn’t get any worse, her entire childhood spirals out of control as she faces depression and struggles to learn the value of her life amongst those intent on treating her differently.“In this YA novel, a multiracial girl finds herself the subject of strange medical experiments in rural Alabama. It’s the summer of 1968. Heat and drought have dried out the fields around Hyssop, where 12-year-old Margaret Ann Odom lives with her Black Cherokee mother, M’dear. . . . The medicine, whatever it is, causes Margaret Ann to feel depressed, but the truth behind the treatme