When white realtors found they could not sell an area of land in Bridgewater Township, New Jersey, to whites, even as summer property, they became desperate. Enter Reverend Amos Hobbs, 1921, and his brothers, General George Washington and Robert, who had left the south a few years earlier seeking economic betterment for their families in the north. The frantic realtors and individual owners of the land sold the property in small lots to the “hungry-to-own-their-own-home” black southern newcomers. Thus began the migration of African-Americans on the peripheral of wealthy white Bridgewater Township.

Although they are largely locked out of the essential utilities taken for granted by their white neighbors, the settlers embrace the land and develop it without complaint. Years later, with a population of roughly 22 families and an average of nine children per family, via “eminent domain,” at least a portion of Hobbstown is set to be eliminated with the expansion of Interstate 287.

By its mere existence as the only black town in Bridgewater, and not by its own volition, Hobbstown becomes the precursor to Bridgewater’s racial conscience. The reader will comprehend the hearts and minds of Hobbstown natives who experience racial adversity in their quest for education within a high ranking school system from the 1920s through 1970s. It is as well the author’s own coming-of-age story as she grew up in Hobbstown and attended Bridgewater public schools in the 1960s.

This book has all of the ingredients of a best seller; it is a creative non-fiction work that reads like a novel.