Description
This is a powerful and moving novel based on the true story of the execution of America's youngest accused murderer. The place is Alcolu, South Carolina, a sleepy mill town. The year is 1944. Linus Bragg, a 14-year-old black, is accused of murdering two small girls-both white. A confession secured by Sheriff Hiram Stoker closes the case, a local jury sentences the boy to the electric chair, and justice is assured.
Or is it? Forty-four years later James Willop, an out-of-work newspaperman from Newark, keeps a promise to his mother-traveling to South Carolina to review the facts and decide whether his uncle Linus was really guilty. In 1944, law and justice did not necessarily coincide.
As Willop's new discoveries collide with past ideas of the facts in the case, he learns that someone doesn't want him digging too hard. Before the truth of the old case emerges, two new murders put Willop on the Wanted List. In addition to researching old injustices, Willop-a black man in the New South-finds himself aggressively fighting for his own freedom.ISBN:9780445403369
