Carter’s One Sister’s Song is a clear-headed, multi-sided look at a complex situation that hasn’t found resolution in hundreds of years of history. What world(s) do people live in when they come from more than one racial or ethnic background? Who wants them? Who claims them? Where do they want to be? How do they choose?

Carter, who knows some of these issues first-hand, is sensitive to the fact that everyone involved in an interracial situation has their own image of how things are and how they should be. She also knows that lives are lived on private terms, sometimes raggedly, sometimes nobly. Her characters are not socio-political representations, but they are real people, right down to their inconsistent and sometimes bumbling ways.

Audrey acts impulsively; Julian zooms from gloom to exuberance and back again. Boyfriends past and present act like clods; some people are just unthinking. Some are just plain mean. Behind it all hovers the spirit of Audrey’s sister Laura and the way she viewed the world. Audrey’s coming to grips with this, finding her own way, is the heart of the story.

Refreshing, engaging, thought-provoking, and real. One Sister’s Song is all of these.