Come a Stranger deals with the African American experience through the eyes of its protagonist Mina Smiths. In Mina, Voigt has created a strong central character who is worthy of admiration and emulation, and reading of her can only increase racial understanding for Come a Stranger's audience. The reader comes to know Mina in a personal way as she changes from a ten-year-old, wondering why God made some people black and some white and why she is one of the black ones, to a fifteen-year-old exuding pride in the woman she has become.

The book is without intense conflict and internal tension, and its primary worth is not in the story it tells but in the insights it reveals about Mina's inner growth and the destination at which she arrives. Mina learns to "look with a long eye" and to appreciate the struggles, as well as...