The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart

T
HE
C
OLOR OF
Y
OUR
S
KIN
A
IN’T THE
C
OLOR OF
Y
OUR
H
EART

Books by Michael Phillips

Is Jesus Coming Back As Soon As We Think?
Destiny Junction
 • 
Kings Crossroads
Make Me Like Jesus
 • 
God, A Good Father
Jesus, An Obedient Son
Best Friends for Life
(with Judy Phillips)
George MacDonald: Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller
Rift in Time
 • 
Hidden in Time
Your Life in Christ
(George MacDonald)
The Truth in Jesus
(George MacDonald)

A
MERICAN
D
REAMS

Dream of Freedom
 • 
Dream of Life
 • 
Dream of Love

T
HE
S
ECRET OF THE
R
OSE

The Eleventh Hour
 • 
A Rose Remembered
Escape to Freedom
 • 
Dawn of Liberty

S
HENANDOAH
S
ISTERS

Angels Watching Over Me
A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton
The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart
Together Is All We Need

C
AROLINA
C
OUSINS

A Perilous Proposal
 • 
The Soldier’s Lady
Never Too Late
 • 
Miss Katie’s Rosewood

The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart
Copyright © 2004
Michael Phillips

Cover photo of girls by David Bailey
Cover photo of plantation by Paul Taylor, index stock
Cover design by The Design Works Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-7642-2702-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Phillips, Michael R., 1946–
        The color of your skin ain’t the color of your heart / by Michael Phillips.
                p. cm. —(Shenandoah sisters)
        ISBN 0-7642-2707-6 (hardback : alk. paper) —ISBN 0-7642-2702-5 (pbk.) 1. Female freindship—Fiction. 2. Plantation life—Fiction. 3. Race relations—Fiction. 4. Reconstruction—Fiction. 5. Teenage girls—Fiction. 6. Orphans—Fiction. 7. North Carolina—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Phillips, Michael R., 1946–      , Shenandoah sisters.

        PS3566.H492    C65        2004
        813'.54—dc22

2003021803

MICHAEL PHILLIPS is one of the premier fiction authors publishing in the CBA marketplace. He has authored more than fifty books, with total sales exceeding six million copies. He is also well known as the editor of the popular George MacDonald Classics series. Michael and his wife, Judy, have three grown sons and make their home in Eureka, California.

Contents

1. W
HAT
W
E’RE
D
OING
H
ERE

2. T
HE
S
TRANGER
W
HO
W
ASN'T A
S
TRANGER

3. O
UR
S
ECRET
I
S
O
UT

4. T
EMPLETON
D
ANIELS

5. U
NSOUGHT
M
EMORIES

6. A V
ISITOR
F
ROM
T
OWN

7. T
HE
S
TORM

8. F
LOOD

9. D
OVER AND
R
ED

10. H
ENRY

11. T
HE
S
UN
A
GAIN

12. L
OOKING
A
HEAD

13. A V
ISIT AND AN
A
TTACK

14. T
HE
W
INTER
P
ASSES

15. O
VERHEARD
P
LANS

16. T
EMPORARY
B
OARDER AT
R
OSEWOOD

17. T
HE
M
EN

18. A T
ALK
W
ITH
H
ENRY

19. K
ATIE
G
ETS
D
ESPERATE

20. S
URPRISE
V
ISITOR

21. A C
ONVERSATION
I
’D
N
EVER
F
ORGET

22. T
HE
S
HOCK OF
M
Y
L
IFE

23. A
NGER,
T
EARS, AND
S
ILENCE

24. L
OOKING INSIDE

25. E
MMA AND
E
LETA

26. T
HE
H
EAVY
L
ANTERN

27. M
R.
T
AYLOR’S
E
YES
P
OP
O
UT

28. H
OME AND
N
EW
Q
UESTIONS

29. T
HE
M
AN
W
ITH THE
F
UNNY
N
AME

30. T
HE
S
USPICIOUS
L
EROY
S
NEED

31. M
RS.
C
LAIRBORNE

32. K
ATIE AND
M
R.
T
AYLOR

33. H
ENRY’S
E
ARS
P
ERK
U
P

34. F
ORGIVENESS

35. N
O
A
IN’T
N
O
A
NSWER

36. W
HAT TO
D
O

37. T
HE
C
LOCK
T
ICKS
D
OWN

38. A W
ELCOME
S
URPRISE

39. S
HOOTOUT

40. V
ENGEANCE
C
OMES TO
R
OSEWOOD

41. A
FTERMATH OF
D
EATH

42. W
ORDS OF
L
OVE

43. T
HE
O
PERATION

44. T
HE
V
IGIL

45. C
RYING
O
UT TO
G
OD

46. A N
EW
B
EGINNING

EPILOGUE

W
HAT
W
E’RE
D
OING
H
ERE

1

A
S MUCH AS ANYTHING
, I
RECKON YOU MIGHT
say I’m a storyteller. And if you’re new to my storytelling, which I reckon a few of you might be, I’ll get started by saying that this is a story about two girls in the South in the year 1865. Of course, it’s different than most stories because it’s true. I’m just telling what happened. What happened to us.

What we’d been doing before you joined us is the same thing colored folks had been doing as slaves for years on the plantations of the South—picking cotton. I wasn’t a slave no more, thanks to Mr. Lincoln, but we’d still been picking cotton as a way to make money and survive that year after the war between the North and South got done.

We’d been picking for weeks and we were still picking. On this particular day when my story gets started, when Katie and I, along with the others, went out to the fields to start picking cotton again, we had no idea that same evening a set of suspicious eyes would be watching us from the woods. Neither did we have any idea that at that very moment someone was riding toward Rosewood who would change everything in ways that Katie and me couldn’t have imagined in a million years. More for me even than for her.