The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

Narrator Gladys Cailiff is eleven years old in 1938 when a new schoolteacher turns Threestep, Georgia, upside down. Miss Grace Spivey is a welltraveled young woman who believes in field trips, Arabian costumes, and reading aloud from her tenvolume set of The Thousand Nights and a Night. The real trouble begins when she decides to revive the annual town festival as an exotic Baghdad bazaar. Miss Spivey and her project transform the lives of everyone around her: Gladys older brother Force (with his moviestar looks), their pregnant sister May (a gifted storyteller herself), and especially the Cailiffs African American neighbor, young Theo Boykin, whose creative genius becomes the key to a colorful, hidden history of the South. Populated by unforgettable charactersincluding three impressive camelsThe Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia rides a magic carpet from a segregated schoolroom in Georgia to the banks of the Tigrisand back againin an entrancing feat of storytelling.