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About
In Eden Rise Tom McKee, a white college freshman, returns to his home in the Alabama Black Belt in the summer of 1965 and becomes embroiled in a civil-rights conflict that divides his family, his town, and his own identity. His wealthy and powerful family is not prepared for the shocks that have followed the racial quake of the Selma March a few months earlier. Tom's black college friend accompanies him home and gets caught in racial violence. Coming to his friend's defense, Tom earns the enmity of segregationist neighbors. He feels both the hot anger of his father for his racial nonconformity and the determined defense of his mother and grandmother, as he witnesses the corrosive effects of the turmoil on his parents' marriage. Attempting to rescue him are a cousin he never knew and a wily old lawyer who meet dangers and legal challenges that force Tom to confront the truth of his legacy.
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Reviews
"Norrell draws upon his expertise as a historian as well as personal experiences in this gripping tale set in his native Alabama. He provides an acute assessment of a small town where the mean-spirited outnumber the well-intentioned and fat lies often triumph over the lean truth. Although the living is not easy in cotton country, the beauty of the land sustains the author as does the hope that no
William Heath, author of The Children Bob Moses Led
"I'm not sure that I always believe in voodoo conjuring, but somehow Robert Norrell has summoned the exemplary storytelling voices of both Harper Lee and John Grisham, then swirled them into one of the best Civil Rights-era novels I've read since Lewis Nordan's Wolf Whistle. Mr. Norrell knows the landscape, the people, and the inexorable beliefs of 1960s Alabama. I guarantee that anyone who reads
George Singleton, author of The Half-Mammals of Dixie
"Jeff Norrell is widely recognized as one of the nation's leading scholars of Southern and African-American history. Not surprisingly his novel about a young Alabama college student caught in the middle of a violent racial altercation in the early 1960s captures the time and place with perfect pitch. But this is more than a lesson in the history of the 1960s, it is a gripping story that combines t
Dan T. Carter, Education Foundation University Professor Emeritus, University of South Car