Same Kind Of Different As Me Book Review!

I finished this book in less than a week~as soon as I started reading it I didn't want to put it down.It grabbed me from the first page~
"Until Miss Debbie I have never spoken to no white woman before.Just answered a few questions,maybe-it wadn't really speakin.And to me even that was mighty risky since the last time I was fool enough to open my mouth to a white woman,I wound up half dead and nearly blind."

Denver Moore had many experiences in his life. He worked in the cotton fields as a child. His payment being a token he could spend only at “da man’s” store. He watched his grandparents’ shack burn to the ground with his beloved Big Mama inside after attempts to wake her failed. He was pulled behind a galloping horse with a noose around his neck until the skin peeled off, “like a rabbit ready for the skillet.” Amazingly, in his 44 years of life, Miss Debbie was his first real conversation with a white woman.

Ron Hall grew up a sharecropper’s son in the mean sun of Texas. He worked the cotton fields, studied, went to college, and met the girl of his dreams, Deborah—then the draft letter arrived in the mail.

After returning from Vietnam, Ron took a salesman job with Campbell’s Soup. Arranging cans and dusting off green-pea soup tops at area grocery stores, he soon became bored. He quit and moved into the banking business. To earn extra money, for his new wife Debbie, he began to sell art work. He quit the bank the day he sold a Charles Russell for a commission larger than his salary.

As Ron’s material wealth bloomed, Denver sank deeper into poverty. Ron opened a gallery and Denver slept two blocks away in an alley. The two were destined to meet as Denver committed a smash and grab on Ron’s gallery.

Same Kind of Different as Me is a heartwarming tale of two men, one rich and another poor, and how their lives intertwine because of a woman called by God to serve in a homeless mission. The story is well-written, humorous, touching, and inspiring. It made me laugh and cry many times,I recommend this book to everyone.It reminds us not to judge a book by it's cover~take a look inside.You might be surprised by just what you find.

I love that the two men alternate telling their tales, a chapter or two at a time.

DENVER MOORE'S BIOGRAPHY

 Denver was born in rural Louisiana in January 1937, and after several tragic events went to live on a plantation in Red River Parish with his Uncle James and Aunt Ethel, who were share croppers.
 Sometime around 1960, he hopped a freight train and began a life as a homeless drifter until 1966 when a judge awarded him a 10 year contract for hard labor at the Louisiana State School of Fools, aka, Angola Prison!
 According to Denver, he went in a man and left a man and received a standing ovation from prisoners in the yard as he walked out of there in 1976.  For the next 22 years he was homeless on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas.  However, there were a few times after a brush with the law, he'd ride the rails visiting cities and hobo jungles across America, sampling regional cuisine like Vienna sausage with fellow passengers.
 In 1998, "He never met Miss Debbie," Miss Debbie met him and his life was changed forever.
 Today, he is an artist, public speaker, and volunteer for homeless causes.  In 2006, as evidence of the complete turn around of his life, the citizens of Fort Worth honored him as "Philanthropist of the Year" for his work with homeless people at the Union Gospel Mission.
A complimentary two-chapter excerpt of Same Kind of Different as Me is
available for download.

{I was sent a copy of Same Kind Of Different As Me to Review By Book Sneeze~All opinions are my own}