Embarrassing. Had to give up like 40 pages in because of the unfiltered white perspective being just too much. Some gems:

"Andre Gates was only African American by the dictates of a culture that had once been proud of the premise that one teaspoon of black blood made a person black- and this was a bad thing- a form of insanity groups of nothern white supremacists were trying to keep alive. Gates was a product of what Anna hoped was intermarriage but was probably generations of rape. Regardless of how the man's gene pool had been filled, he'd turned out very pretty. Not as pretty as Harry Belafonte, but close. By the back tilt of his head and set of his shoulders, she guessed he was also proud unto arrogance. Perhaps there was a hint of disdain in the flare of the nostril or in the curve of the lip. Perhaps Anna only imagined it because he looked too fine for everyday use."

So you got:

1) Her assessment, as a white woman, on whether this man counts as African American?

2) Assuming someone mixed race is a product of generations of rape?! I've never heard anyone do this before, thanks for a new reason to mistrust random white folks ma'am, I shudder to think some people might actually think this in reality when meeting me. Nevermind that in this country the last laws to actually ban interracial marriage were struck down in 1967 (years after both my parents were born, for the record), but I'd say by 2002 there are gonna be plenty of perfectly happy people married to someone of a different race, Miss Barr. Jesus fucking christ.

3) The fetishization/objectification of black men by a white women. By the end, describing him like one would a horse or some tool. "The nostrils" and not his nostrils- something "too fine for everyday use." This is disgusting.

4) Writing all of this in such an awkwardly constructed, confusing way that I had to read it several times to even understand what she was saying. 

After that paragraph smacked me in the face a few times, a few pages later we get:

"He must have agreed to the bondage."
"Bondage... now that's a word we don't want to go throwing around in this part of the country."
"Because of the whole slavery thing?" Anna asked, knowing she sounded about as sensitive and ethnically diverse as a hitching post.

Of course the black character she says this to simply laughs, probably because the paragraph above was internal dialogue and not something the other characters could have caught her saying. So Nevada awards Anna with the Black Seal of Approval from Sherif Morgan Freeman (who is in fact who she compares the sherrif character to) so we know oh, Anna isn't being ~racist~ she's just a lil rough around the edges and calling it like she sees it! Gotcha gotcha gotcha.

I read a quote in another review down below about black folks not voting for a black leader because they want a white guy in charge? I didn't get that far in, because I am frankly pretty done hearing what Nevada Barr has to say about black people, culture, or anything to do with race at this point. Not worth reading when this is the bizarre foot the book starts on- she is an author I'll be avoiding from now on. Glad this was a library book.