The Parker Inheritance

The Parker Inheritance

The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson was a page-turner from the start. There is a “puzzle piece” mystery that is waiting to be solved in the town of Lambert, South Carolina. The mystery will lead to a great fortune of money and reveal the identity of the person behind the fortune. The clues are within a letter that was given to four people, one being Abigail Caldwell. When the rest of the town thought it was a hoax and Abigail lost her job because of it, she left the letter for her granddaughter, Candice to find and hopefully solve. When Candice returns to Lambert, she meets a friend, Brandon and finds the letter that changes their lives forever. They also begin to dig up the historical past of Lambert and all of it’s secrets while trying to find the fortune. One was a family called the Washington’s who were kicked out in the 1950’s. This book also discusses racial issues and the stereotypes that come along with race, hiding behind identities, sexuality, family structures, bullying, and the importance of being with the ones you love. One quote from “Culturally Diverse Literature” states,”Teachers need more books that depict diverse lifestyles, opportunities, beliefs, choices, and worldviews in addition to books that focus on the status quo.” This book is one of those books and it makes the reader think about different lives and how their views of the world could be different from others.

Check out this link to learn more about the story behind The Parker Inheritance: http://varianjohnson.com/books/the-parker-inheritance/story-behind-parker-inheritance/

“Just because you don’t see the path doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Themes

There were many themes in The Parker Inheritance. These were racial issues, hiding behind an identity, sexuality, family structures, bullying, and being loved/finding friendship. In the book, as Candice and Brandon were finding clues about the hidden fortune, they also found out about a part of the historical background of Lambert. They found out there was a family, the Washington’s, who were forced out of Lambert mostly because of their skin color in the 1950s. Racial tensions were already high then and Big Dub (Enoch), the father, wanted to challenge the all-white tennis team to a tennis match against his all-black team. Reminder schools in South Carolina were still segregated at the time so these two teams came from two different schools. The game was private and Big Dub’s team won fair and square. However, not every white person saw it as that because of the skin color and jumped and beat Big Dub and one of the players on the team, Reggie. They also threatened to hurt Siobhan, Big Dub’s daughter, if they were to see her. Big Dub knew that they had to leave so they did. Reggie also left, but went different ways. Flash forward to 2018 when Candice and Brandon, who are black, were looking up facts and clues to find the fortune. They were at a school that contained a memorial for Perkins High School, the old all black school. When they were leaving, Brandon realized he forgot his phone and they were knocking to get back into the school. The principal of the new high school was white and thought Candice and Brandon were up to no good because of their skin color and thought they were trying to steal because they had documents and yearbooks in their hands from the memorial room. The principal found out right after that, they were fine and acted like everything was okay an brushed off what had just happened. Another example is Brandon’s sister, Tori. Tori drove Candice and Brandon around when they needed her too, but whenever she drove she was always nervous about a cop pulling her over. This is because of how people who are black are treated and they are not given as much benefit of the doubt. Each of these examples demonstrates how much racial issues are still happening and the book did an amazing job bringing it to light even more.

Hiding behind another identity was also a theme in this book shown by Reginald ‘Reggie’ Bradley a.k.a James Parker and Candice’s father. Reggie is half white and half black and when Reggie had to leave Lambert, Coach Douglas saw it as a way for Reggie to start over and have a new identity as a white person. For Reggie this was hard to grasp because even though he is mixed, he has always seen himself in the black community. Coach Douglas talks him into changing his name, James Parker is what Reggie decides, and to act like he is white. Coach Douglas also makes up a reason for Reggie’s death. As Reggie begins his new life, things are different for him and he can recognize the new ways he is being treated because people think he is white and he was able to . Reggie has always kept a tab on Siobhan, his girlfriend from high school, and he wants to see her again. When he finds her and they start to talk, Siobhan can tell there is a difference of how he acts now and she does not like it. He realizes what he has done and wants to fix it for her. Later, after Siobhan dies, Reggie wants to go back to Reggie. He was tired of being someone else and sold his company and decided to turn his fortune into a mystery for someone to solve. Candice’s dad also faced hiding behind an identity. He didn’t change his name or anything like that, but he was hiding his true self from Candice. He did not want to tell her about his new interest in who he is dating. When he told Candice about his new life and his new boyfriend and how they have to hide it at work since he works in construction and explains how the men at work are not for/in support of gay men and have said things before bout it.

“In some ways, her father was like Reggie Bradley. He got everything he wanted, but at a horrible price. He had to hide his real self.”

Sexuality was discussed about Brandon’s friend, Quincey, and Candice’s dad. Both of these characters are gay and are trying to deal with the challenges those in the world are giving them. For Quincey, he was being bullied at school because of his sexual preferences and had to leave for the summer because of how bad it was getting. Candice’s dad could no longer feel like himself at work and worried what others thought about him. Since Brandon is Quincey’s friend, Brandon was also bullied and called gay by some of the boys in school. This book did well incorporating this in because it is not something that is mentioned in many books. Brandon had brought up the idea for creating a community center for the LGBTQIA community. A place where they could just be themselves and enjoy being around one another. Candice loved the idea and they decided to put some of the money of the inheritance towards the community center.

Bullying was not only related to someone being gay in this book, but also related to how someone acted. Brandon was bullied by a few boys who lived in his neighborhood. They did tease him and call him gay, but they also bullied him because of how much he loved to read. When him and Candice first meet, they go to the library together and he makes the statement that he only reads boy books. This is because he is already putting up walls because of how others have teased him in he past. Come to find out, he loves almost any book and him and Candice trade off “boy” and “girl” books and they also love puzzle books. Brandon is also seen as a nerd that would not be good at sports, but later in the book Candice sees him playing basketball and he’s actually really good. He’s just been put down by others for so long that he doesn’t want to play with others except his friends.

Family structures are also shown differently in The Parker Inheritance. The family that Candice now has are divorced parents which is still something she is getting used to. Brandon’s family consists of his single mother and sister. It seems that his dad has not been in the picture for a while and Tori mentions that she does not like her dad and wants nothing to do with him. Another family that we see is the Washington’s who have a mother, father, and child alls still together, but after they move, Leanne (the mother and wife) becomes more of the dominant force and joins into the new community.

This book touched a lot on being around the ones you love and creating friendships. This was shown throughout the book and repeated by Reggie a few times about being around the ones you love. This book shows the importance of this statement and how we need to have people around us who love and support us for who we are not someone we are trying to be. Reggie realized this later in life, but once he did he did everything in his power to spend as much time with Siobhan has he could before she passed away. Candice and Brandon created a friendship that would live on for years and it showed how important their friendship is to one another especially when they saw each other again three months after they found the inheritance.

Teaching Connections

There are different topics this book could bring up in the classroom and that are still strong topics in our society today. It’s important for students to be exposed to this information and to be able to discuss and write about these topics and what their input about each one. They could even draw a picture of what they think. Too many times, these topics are push aside in classrooms because of how in depth or how “touchy” it could be. The truth is there are probably students in the classroom that are still facing these topics every day and never discuss them or at least try to. It’s crucial that as teachers, we incorporate these books into our classroom. A quote from “Culturally Diverse Literature” states, “… if children never see themselves in books, they receive the subtle messages that they are not important enough to appear in books and that books are not for them. Conversely, if children see only themselves in the books they read, they come to the conclusion that those who are different from them are not worthy of appearing in books.” This is a quote all teachers need to take with them into the classroom and when deciding on what books they should read and have the students read.

Connected Texts

It’s important for students to see text that can be connected to one another so they can see it in many examples. Texts can include multi-media text (videos, songs, etc.), posters, pictures, speeches, other books, and other documents. Having these different texts allows the students to see the information in different ways and can lead to great discussions. One example could be this video describing the “Erase the Hate” campaign.