If your elementary school reading list was anything like mine, you may have read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. If you’re from the north, that may have been your only exposure to life in the south after slavery. I knew all about sharecropping and how it was essentially a way to make slavery legal, what I didn’t realize until I read Same Kind of Different As Me was that there are still sharecroppers alive. I thought it was one of those terrible things in our history that went on long before the World Wars and modern times. It’s not.

Same Kind of Different As Me chronicles the stories of Denver Moore, a sharecropper-turned-homeless man and Ron Hall, an up and coming art dealer. It is told in alternating chapters from each man’s own perspective, first recounting the life events that brought them to Texas at the same time, and their ultimate meeting and friendship.

Written directly to the reader, as if you are sitting down for coffee with Ron and Denver, the story is gripping and personal. You come to know them like friends, and it’s just as hard to put the book down as it would be to walk out on someone while they are talking.