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A Novel
by Eleanor Henderson
Book Reviewed by:From New York Times bestselling author Eleanor Henderson, an audacious American epic set in rural Georgia during the years of the Depression and Prohibition.
Named a Best Book of 2017 by The San Francisco Chronicle
An Entertainment Weekly "Must-Read" Book for Fall
Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: in a house full of secrets, 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. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured.
Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, 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 who is as close to Elma as a sister. But soon it becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined. As startling revelations mount, a web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the painful truth.
Acclaimed author Eleanor Henderson has returned with a novel that combines the intimacy of a family drama with the staggering presence of a great Southern saga. Tackling themes of racialized violence, social division, and financial crisis, The Twelve-Mile Straight is a startlingly timely, emotionally resonant, and magnificent tour de force.
I don't know where to start, I loved this book SO MUCH! (Lee M). So far, this is my choice for best book of 2017- it's a page turner! (Rosemary K). I was blown away reading it; the prose and style were so captivating that I felt at times I was actually there in the moment as the events of the story unfolded (Janine S). I loved how the truths in the story were revealed slowly, in layers, reaching backward and forward in time (Kristine M). It will join other favorites on my bookshelf to be read again (Liz D)...continued
Full Review
(727 words)
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(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
The major characters in The Twelve-Mile Straight grew up as sharecroppers.
Merriam-Webster defines a sharecropper as "a tenant farmer…who is provided with credit for seed, tools, living quarters, and food, who works the land, and who receives an agreed share of the value of the crop minus charges." While farming methods similar to sharecropping have been used around the world for millennia, the concept of the tenant farmer became especially prevalent in the United States during the post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction (1863-1867) and through the first half of the 20th century.
During the last few months of the Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman issued what was known as "Field Order Number ...
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I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now only that place where the books are ...
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Bill Cheng, author of Southern Cross the Dog
A family drama, a mystery, a Southern Gothic, and a searing study of the complexities of race in America...Cotton County is a dark place, tortured by its own secrets, and it’s in Henderson’s expert hand and penetrating eye that those secrets are carried into light.
