More than an anatomy of a church arson, The Ballad of Little River is a poignant but hard-hitting biography of one of the poorest areas in the United States -- where deer outnumber people. A cauldron of unresolved racial and familial conflict, of heat, boredom, gossip, and grudges, Little River, Alabama, gained notoriety in 1997 as the site of the U. S. government's first conviction under a new hate-crimes law intended to stop a rash of fires set at black churches around the country. When journalist Paul Hemphill, son of an Alabama truck driver and veteran writer on the blue-collar South, moved into the area, he discovered a world that time had virtually forgotten -- an obscure, isolated community in the swampy woodlands far from the mainstream of American life, a forlorn cluster of poverty and ignorance and dead-end jobs. He met a stew of heroes and villains right out of fiction -- "Peanut" Ferguson, "Doll" Boone, "Hoss" Mack, Joe Dees, Murray January, a Klansman named "Brother Phil, " and his stripper wife known as "Wild Child" -- all swirling in a maelstrom of history and heat. Originally published in cloth by Free Press, The Ballad of Little River is Hemphill's gripping look at the southern backwoods, a chilling cautionary tale filled with both kindness and cruelty, told in the steady voice of a master storyteller and one who knows the human heart.
Copyright:
2000
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781439138267
Related ISBNs:
9780817311100
Publisher:
Free Press
Date of Addition:
11/17/10
Copyrighted By:
Houghton Mifflin Co., Ellen R. Sasahara, Paul Hemphill
