From Publishers Weekly
Written in poetic prose, filled with masterfully drawn and sympathetic characters that a less able hand might have rendered in stereotypes, this first novel blends the irony of Flannery O'Connor's fiction and the poignance of Harper Lee's. Moving quickly and believably from the eve of integration in rural Mississippi to the present-day street gangs in Chicago's housing projects, Campbell ( Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad ) captures the gulf between pre-and post-civil rights America; her story, starting with the murder of a young black man whose trial--argued before an all-white jury--captures national attention, shows us how far we have come and yet suggests we have not come so far after all. When word gets out that black teenager Armstrong Todd was talking French to Lily Cox, the Cox men kill him. Clayton Pinochet, the local newspaper reporter whose father is the most powerful and reactionary man in town, secretly tips off the national press; the men are arrested for what in previous times would have been a permissible crime. Their acquittal makes it clear that the system doesn't provide justice, and life never returns to normal for anyone. Details--the advent of TV, the polio vaccine, a Faulkner novel, Vietnam, women's lib and Oprah! --add to the rich, textured background.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
Set mostly in rural Mississippi during the early Civil Rights era, this first novel by the author of the autobiography Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad ( LJ 4/1/89) opens dramatically when a poor white man, Floyd Cox, murders a black teenager, Armstrong Todd. The boy's crime? Speaking harmless French in the presence of Cox's wife, Lily, whom Cox himself routinely brutalizes. Nearly every stratum of the small town of Delta quakes over Cox's action, taken to impress his daddy. Campbell ably reveals the complex relationships among townspeople in this multilayered Southern community. Even though some characters' blues clearly differ from others, all have compromises to make and grief, shame, and responsibility to bear or share. The ending leaves open the possibility of recovery or recurrence.
- Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., ColumbiaCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
