Introduction

From New York Times bestselling author Eleanor Henderson, an audacious American epic set in rural Georgia during the years of the Depression and Prohibition.

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.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2017: Unflinching and immersive, The Twelve-Mile Straight is a panoramic portrait of 1930s Georgia, where poverty and violence collide with wealth and family – born and bred, white and black, rich and poor. Set in the Jim Crow South, bestselling author Eleanor Henderson begins her novel with damning clarity: two babies are born on a sharecropper’s farm in Cotton County, one light skinned and one dark skinned. As the story goes, they are twins born to Juke Jessup’s daughter, Elma. With help from Nan, the black housekeeper, the two women raise these babies into a world that is collapsing around them. A lynching on the farm sets off a series of secrets and cover-ups that threaten to ruin the family Elma has created. Will the truth set them free or bury them alive? Henderson’s novel unravels the day to day hardship of a small town in the south and how abuse, inequality and racism scar and wound generation after generation. --Al Woodworth

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