Though her mother had passed, there would be maternal, familial and nurturing love to be found in the warmth and kindness of those whom she would meet here. With the Black Madonna photograph as a compass and the pressures of the changing Civil Rights climate as a motor, Lily ultimately had found personal redemption in the implications of both. It is no matter of coincidence that the author so aggressively intertwined the conditions of Lily's confrontation of her own demons concerning the death of her mother with the personal revelations that, on a broad social scale, underscored the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Indeed, the resolution finds Lily in a place of relative emotional equanimity, having confronted the truth about her mother, having faced the anger of her father and having ultimately settled on her life in the Boatright's community. Accordingly, "August and her community become Lily's new family,...
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