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 … 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.
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This engaging, expansive novel manages to feel historical and, sadly, up to the minute as it probes the sins at the heart of the American experience… This is the kind of novel you sink into, live inside. When you’re finished, it will live inside you. A bravura performance.
The author has a great voice, but the story is longer and a bit darker than need be.
Y’all this book felt like the twelve thousand mile straight. I just did not enjoy it at all. I kept waiting for something to happen and nothing ever did. The entire book felt like filler between plot twists that never came. The story itself didn’t flow very well and the characters weren’t very well developed, it read like a first draft.
Many black people in Georgia in the 1930’s lived in conditions that were not much better than slavery. History tells us that lynchings still took place in this time and place, and this book includes one. The book also includes sexual abuse of black women.
In the midst of the brutality, and all the bad players, there are loving relationships that somehow flourish, with many ups and downs and complications.
This is definitely worth reading, even though it’s intense and complex.
Long story with no real clarity. Confusing at the end.
Wonderful southern gothic novel. The writing is first rate. I loved it.
Historical fiction about racial events.
I believe this story does not depict the real south. Maybe some but not the way it’s told.
Lyrical… mesmerizing, disturbing, and wonderfully persuasive. The world is brutal even as the landscape is lush and seductive… Unstinting in showing us the everyday savagery of Jim Crow, of poverty, and of family abuse. A riveting, consequential story full of complex secrets and unexpected turns.
One of the deepest and most nuanced explorations of our shared humanity that I’ve read…The writing is so extraordinary it will make your teeth ache; the story is so compelling that you may gasp out loud…This is no ordinary novel. It is art of the highest order.
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.
An intricate and fascinating tale of maternity and paternity, of race and blood, of two young women doing what they must do to survive… This is brave material, confronted with unblinking honesty and woven with intelligence and grace.
This was a difficult book for me to read yet I couldn’t just walk away from it. It often made me uncomfortable knowing it represented a slice of time, and a place that is hopefully behind us.
I loved this book , but some scenes were hard to read
I recently read Tobacco Road and was left thinking wtf. Coincidentally this became available shortly after on my library app and I wasn’t sure I was up for another southern tale. I’m glad I took a chance: great storytelling with moving characters.
I found this book difficult to read. The premise of the plot was difficult at best. Of course this is fiction, but the idea that there is an element of truth int he hopelessness of this story troubles me greatly. The plot revolves around a family living in desperate circumstances on an unpaved twelve mile stretch of road that leads to nowhere which is a hint to where the plot is going. One of the threads that run through the plot is the unkept promises to pave the road. In the process of unfolding the plot, two girls–one black and one white–are are reared together almost like sisters. The father of the black girl leaves to pursue employment that will provide better for his family; however, the circumstances into which he falls lead to prison and the idea planted in the head of his daughter is that he has abandoned her. As they grow up on this poor dirt farm, both girls learn to take on the chores and keep the animals tended and the crops watched as well as face ways to serve as caregivers to the white girl’s father. When he dies, both girls become pregnant and both young men do not stick around. The plot lasts for the months that the pregnancies last. One sees how the human spirit inspires the girls to keep on keeping on for the sake of their children. When circumstances seem impossible, the road is paved and the story climaxes. If you can read this without it making you too sad, I encourage you to do so. It is a story of overcoming whatever life throws at you no matter how bad it is.
Realistic. Sadly so.
Non-linear structure added to the intrigue of the story.
I felt that it lasted longer than it needed to, There seemed like too much togetherness
to suit me.
Elma and Nancy
Poverty of the 1930s sharecroppers resonates in this book. Lorded over by the money, the property owner reminded them daily of his wealth, his strength and his power.