Book description
Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black
youths. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls
emerge from another freight car, and within seconds the cry of rape goes
up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune,
again and again. A young journalist, whose only connection to the
incident is her overheated social conscience, fights to save the nine
youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and
make amends for her own past.
Stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism into an explosive brew, Scottsboro
is a novel of a shocking injustice that reverberated around the world.
'A fine novel . . . Anyone who wants to appreciate the scale of the
miracle that a black man has been elected president of the United States
should sit down with Scottsboro
' Lionel Shriver Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow in fiction,
is the author of The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank
, also published by Picador. She lives in New York City with her
husband.
