mississippi

In the lush expanses of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the Compson family's mansion bore witness to the disintegration of a once dignified lineage. Quentin Compson, the last in line, endured the haunting echoes of his family's decay. Mired in the relentless passage of time, Quentin attempted to erase the stains of his family's disgrace.

Aibileen Clark had been through so many changes, seen so many faces, and cleaned up so many houses in her lifetime. Today was different, however. She had an unusual sense of anxiety mixed with anticipation. She was about to meet her new employer, Miss Margret, a recent graduate from the University of Mississippi, with liberal ideas for the time.

It was the calm after the storm in Clanton, Mississippi. The culminating tension from the rustic courthouse had finally dissipated. The trial of Carl Lee Hailey, an African-American man who had taken the law into his own hands, assassinated the two white men who brutally raped and nearly killed his 10-year-old daughter, Tonya, had indeed stirred the quiet town into a frenzy.

In a small south Mississippi town, a young reporter, Miles Hart, found himself living an extraordinary story. He was just 24 years old, drowned in his journalistic dream of making it to the big leagues, when he found himself embroiled in a case that shook the roots of Ford County. It was the murder trial of Danny Padgitt.

In the deep south, racial disparity was a terrible, normative truth that painted the white picket fences of Mississippi with a coat of vile ignorance. Detective Alex Cross, a character invented in the mind of James Patterson, was stepping outside his comfort zone in Washington, D.C., to infiltrate the disturbing tendrils of this prejudice and iniquity. This venture was taking him to the quaint township of Belvedere, a place he had never heard of, where the Mississippi river's charm belied the ugly undercurrent of racial hatred that was teeming beneath its surface.