First published 2018
John Edgar Wideman begins his investigation after discovering a buried fact about the Till family. Louis Till was executed by the Army in 1945 for rape and murder. His son Emmett would die ten years later in Mississippi, lynched at age fourteen. Wideman was also fourteen when he first heard about Emmett's death. Now in his seventies, he cannot let go of these connected tragedies. He searches military records and family histories to reconstruct Louis Till's story. The Army kept Louis's execution secret from his family for years. Wideman combines research with personal reflection and imaginative reconstruction. He creates conversations between the living and the dead, between fathers and sons across generations. The book weaves together the parallel injustices that destroyed both Tills. Wideman examines how American systems of violence claimed both men, though in different ways. His investigation becomes a meditation on memory, family, and the stories America chooses to remember or forget.
Genres: history, american-fiction, 20th-century, african-american, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Mississippi
Period: 1945, 1955
208 pages · Paperback · Canongate Canons
Content warnings: racism