Summary
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930. Two babies-- one light-skinned, the other dark-- are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. Elma begins to raise... Full description
Summary: |
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930. Two babies-- one light-skinned, the other dark-- are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town. Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her mercurial father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper. But the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined, and a web of lies begins to collapse around the family. |
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Physical Description: |
543 pages ; 24 cm |
Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references. |
ISBN: |
9780062422088 0062422081 |
Author Notes: |
Eleanor Henderson is an author who was born in Greece and raised in Florida. She later attended Middlebury College amd the University of Virginia, where she graduated with her MFA. She has written two novels: The Twelve-Mile Straight and Ten Thousand Saints. Her works have appeared in several publications including Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Best American Short Stories. She is also the co-editor of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Writers. (Bowker Author Biography) |