The Mighty Miss Malone

The Mighty Miss Malone is a historical middle grade novel by Christopher Paul Curtis. Deza Malone, age 12, endures the challenges of the Great Depression with her tight-knit family by her side. When Father must leave their home in Indiana to find work, Mother, Deza, and Deza’s brother Jimmie soon realize they are strongest when they are all together—and they start a journey to try to find Father. First published in 2012, the book was Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Children’s Book of that year, and it earned a Starred Review from Kirkus. This guide follows the 2012 edition by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Plot Summary

Deza Malone is a 12-year-old Black American girl who lives in Gary, Indiana in 1936. The ongoing Great Depression serves up plenty of challenges in her life; her single pair of shoes are too small and have no heels, for example, and without money for a dentist, her painful cavities worsen. Deza, however, has a spirited, optimistic outlook, and she handles difficulties admirably with her family members by her side: Mother, who cleans for a wealthy family; Father, who looks for work every day; and Jimmie, Deza’s 15-year-old brother, well-known locally for his impressive singing. Deza enjoys school and is proud of her excellent marks. She also loves to read and hopes to be a teacher someday.

The narrative opens with Deza checking over her last essay of the year for Mrs. Needham, her wonderful sixth grade teacher. The essay is about her family, and she knows it deserves six pages instead of the requested two. Deza is devastated when Mrs. Needham, in an effort to calm Deza’s flowery language and overly long pages, gives her an A- instead of the A+ she expected. Mrs. Needham also tells Deza she has great promise as a scholar and offers her advanced tutoring. Mrs. Needham gives Deza a new dress and shoes out of kindness.

Summer begins, and Deza spends time at the public library with her best friend, Clarice. Father goes on a fishing trip with three of his friends to Lake Michigan, despite Mother’s warnings against the dangers of the open water. To Deza’s shock and dismay, Father does not come home. Mother and the wife of another man in the fishing group find their abandoned truck, but there is no sign of the men. A week passes before Father finally comes home injured and traumatized. Their small rowboat lost its anchor, drifted, and flipped. The other men did not survive. Mother, Deza, and Jimmie help nurse Father back to health. Just as Father begins to sound like himself again, he and many other Americans suffer a disappointment: The Black American boxer, Joe Louis, strongly favored to win a much-hyped boxing match against the white German Max Schmeling, loses. Father decides on the heels of that defeat that he must leave Gary to try to find work in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Mother and Jimmie cannot dissuade him, and Deza is too upset to even say goodbye.

After a month passes without word from Father, Mother learns that she is out of a job as her wealthy employers are going to Europe. Mother decides that they will end their lease on their rented house and leave for Flint, where Father’s mother lives, to try to find Father. Deza is devastated to leave Clarice. Mother’s plan for transportation falls through, and they must first accept a ride to Chicago from a con artist friend of Jimmie’s. They will then “ride the rails” the rest of the way to Flint. Father’s mother has moved away, and Mother has no leads on Father’s whereabouts, so the three Malones stay in a camp with other impoverished and homeless folks. Deza starts school in Flint and quickly realizes the extent of the teachers’ racism when her writing earns only a C+. One night a white harmonica player praises Jimmie’s singing; Jimmie decides to try his luck finding work as a singer. The same night, police raid the camp and destroy the shelters. They try to expel everyone from Flint, but Deza and Mother go to a friend’s house. They soon rent a single room on Mother’s job wages. After months pass, Deza finally gets a letter from Father saying he is working as a traveling carpenter. The letter includes cash. Letters from Father continue (though none come from Jimmie). Deza happens to see the white harmonica player who tells her that Jimmie is singing at a Detroit speakeasy.

Deza takes a bus and surprises Jimmie on stage. Jimmie is doing very well and takes Deza right away to a dentist who treats her decayed teeth. Deza discusses Jimmie coming home because they have now heard from Father, but Jimmie says he must earn money. One day Father sends two keys to a new rented house back home in Gary. Mother and Deza go by bus to their new house after school is out. Soon after they settle in, Mother shocks Deza by telling her she heard from a man in a poorhouse in Lansing, Michigan, and this man might be Father. On the cab ride there, Mother reveals to Deza that the letters were not from Father. Father is indeed the man at the poorhouse; he is thin and unkempt. He tried to write home but in his confusion and depression, he used the wrong address. Deza realizes it was Jimmie who sent the letters and money and rented the new house for them. On the way back to Gary with Father, he offers words of gratitude for his family. Deza has hopes that he will recover and is eager for even better times ahead.