Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, 256 pages

This is a book club book this year for two of the library's book clubs.  The book was written in 1937 and is a classic in African-American and Women's Literature.  In 2005, Time named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels.

It's a difficult story to read, or in my case, listen to because of how people treat each other.  It is set in Georgia and Florida in, I believe the early 1920s.  The exact timing is never shared, but I believe it is before the Depression.  There is total separation of whites and blacks, except of course, in some working relationships.

It is the story of a beautiful, mixed race woman Janie Crawford, who marries three times.  She grows from a quiet girl who does as she is told to a strong and confident woman by the end of the story.  It is beautifully written, but some of the dialog is difficult to understand because it is written in the vernacular of the time and location of the story.