This is one of the best books I have read in awhile - and I read A LOT of books. I actually downloaded off of audible and listened to it - and must say it was the best reading I have heard - it really makes the book come to life - I didn't want the story to end.
Synopsis
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating
from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and
her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger.
Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine,
the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one
will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her
seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the
loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way.
She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows
both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the
sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but
she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally
finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her
reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will
nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them
all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines
that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to
be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three
extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their
own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters,
caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled
with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal
story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.