LoveReading Says
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009
Alabama 1931 and nine black youths fight with white ‘trash’ boys all riding illegally on a freight train. Two white girls cry rape. The ensuing court case found the black boys guilty although one of the girls later retracted her statement. That is fact. This very fine novel recreates the episode through the eyes of the girl who changed her story and an ambitious female reporter incensed by the miscarriage of justice. It is an extraordinary book of race, class, prejudice, anti-Semitism and injustice, powerfully told and really capturing the north/south division of the time, but most importantly the racial hatred, very much in the vein of a fictional In Cold Blood.
Comparison: Jim Harrison, Pat Conroy.
Click here to read Ellen Feldman's post about racial prejudice in America.
Sarah Broadhurst
Find This Book In
Scottsboro Synopsis
Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls, dressed in men’s overalls, emerge from another freight car. Though they show no signs of abuse, fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune, again and again. While the NAACP and the Communist Party vie to save the boys’ lives and make political hay, and a wily criminal lawyer renowned for defending underworld characters battles age-old prejudices, a young journalist fights to rescue the nine youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and make amends for her own past. Intertwining historical actors with fictional characters and stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism in an explosive brew, Scottsboro is a novel of a case and a cause that roiled the nation for almost half a century. No crime in American history, let alone a crime that never occurred, resulted in as many trials, convictions, reversals, and seminal Supreme Court decisions. It destroyed lives, forged careers, and brought out the best—and the worst—in the men and women who fought for the cause.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780393333527 |
| Publication date: |
12th May 2009 |
| Author: |
Ellen Feldman |
| Publisher: |
WW Norton & Co |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
378 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
|
| Other Genres: |
|
| Recommendations: |
|
