racism

In the heart of Mississippi, during the grip of the Great Depression, the Logan family, led by their matriarch, Mama Logan, had always been a beacon of strength and unity. They were one of the few African American families who owned their land, a source of pride and a symbol of defiance against the oppressing racial hierarchy.

It was a bitter winter in Lorain, Ohio, the kind that made your bones feel as fragile as a moth's wings. Claudia and Frieda's home was a sanctuary, at least it was supposed to be. But no amount of plastered newspaper insulation could keep out the biting chill. Lately, another form of cold had seeped in; one that came with Pecola Breedlove's arrival.

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 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.