Segregation tale describes bond of women

Each morning in 1960s-era Jackson, Miss., black maids put on their crisp uniforms and cross the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to the white section of town to clean houses and raise children. For whites, life is orderly, stratified and just. For blacks, it is anything but. Kathryn Stockett's powerful first novel, "The Help," follows three women —- Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny —- through this divided world as they strive to understand the complexities of their segregated society.

Skeeter has returned home from college to find that her beloved maid is gone. Despite efforts to uncover the truth of her sudden disappearance, no one is talking —- especially not Skeeter's mother, who adheres to segregationist ideas about the relationship between whites and blacks.

Without the prospect of a husband, Skeeter falls into a stifling rhythm of tennis at the country club and bridge with her married friends. As she spends time with her friends, she notices the way they interact with their maids. She soon learns that the maids are watching the white women, too. Aibileen finds if increasingly difficult to ignore the prejudices around her since the death of her beloved son. She silently chafes when her young charge, Mae Mobley, comes home from school spouting racist ideas and her employer voices fear that blacks carry disease. Like Aibileen, Minny is tired of the status quo. Unfairly blackballed from employment by Jackson's well-to-do, Minny lands a job working for Celia Foote, a woman labeled white trash by Jackson's upper crust. As Minny watches Celia struggle to get into the Junior League, she begins to see that there are many types of injustice.