Gina's Take

Wow. This is amazing writing! I read this and thought maybe you ought to be critting me. My first question is what is a ya-ya? In Greek it means grandmother. Here I'm guessing it's a gumbo term? Are most people familiar with it? Regardless, it didn't not work. I was interested and kept reading.

I LOVE some of your descriptions...picture frames rocking to the rhythm of her steps, orange spraying over eastern cane fields, etc. Very, very nice. I would absolutely buy this book on what I've read here.

A few suggestions. The "salty" bacon. Jess will argue with me, but I'd lose the "salty". You can't smell the salt. It reminds me of when people write "salty" tears ran down someone's cheek. Yes, tears are salty but unless that person is licking their cheek, they'd say hot tears, if they're goofy, they might say wet tears, etc but they'd stick with the feeling rather than a sense they're not using.

I wanted to change a few of your "that" s to "which" s.

Love the characterization of Bet wearing a straw hat cocked to the side.

Twice Bet was mentioned as this pov character's sister. Once is enough.

The father says something to the effect of telling this character he's raising no boys to fuss about work. That stopped me. I went back to the beginning to make sure the pov character was indeed a female. Why does the father not say "girls" to this girl?

This was an awesome, amazing, wonderful piece in my opinion. Let us know when we can buy the book.