Set in the late 1960s Have No Shame tells the story of a sheltered small-town girl Alison who finds her eyes opened to the goings on in her town when she discovers the body of a coloured man in a river whilst on her way home. This shocks her to realise that people hated him so much for the colour of his skin that they would beat a man to death.This discovery seems to open Alison's eyes to what is going on around her, and the realisation just how close to home it is, but she is no longer willing to sit back and be quiet as is expected of her especially when her rebellious sister Maggie returns home from New York full of news as to how different an integrated life is.
And when she meets handsome Jackson, a soldier who has just returned home from Vietnam who is the dead man's nephew, she questions whether she really loves her fiance Jimmy Lee who she's supposed to be getting married to in a few weeks if she can have strong feelings for another man.
Alison soon finds herself in the midst of the movement for change in her town and is surprised that more people are involved than she at first realised, especially when one of them turns out to be her own mother. Can they all really make a difference or will things continue the way they always have done?
This is a story that will make you think as to how lucky we are to live in the generation that we do, I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like for people to live in a segregated society like that. It's a romance story with a difference and one that stayed with me long after I finished reading.