First published 1995
Mississippi, 1963. Byron De La Beckwith hides in honeysuckle bushes across from NAACP leader Medgar Evers's home and shoots him dead. Two trials end without conviction. Thirty years pass before prosecutors try again. Journalist Maryanne Vollers chronicles this decades-long pursuit of justice, drawing on exclusive interviews with the legal team, Evers's family, and Beckwith himself. She reconstructs the assassination and reveals new evidence while exploring the conspiracy theories that emerged around the case. Vollers traces Mississippi's painful transformation as the state confronts its violent history. The book follows the third trial that finally sends Beckwith to prison for life, closing one of the civil rights era's most frustrating unsolved murders. This account captures both the personal cost of racial violence and the determination required to achieve belated justice.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, crime, biography-memoir, 21st-century, journalism, african-american-historical-fiction, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: belated-justice, decades-long-pursuit, true-crime
Setting: Mississippi
Period: 1963, 1990s
411 pages · Paperback · Little, Brown & Company
Content warnings: murder, racism, violence