Important work about the South from American poet Patrick Phillips. It is important to understand how America arrived at the place where currently find ourselves; and in this book we see, in all its bloodiness, the root of all that divides us.

After two incidents in 1912 involving white women and black men, the good citizens of Forsyth County, Georgia took it upon themselves to cleanse their county of all things negro. They killed, threatened and burned out over 1000 blacks living in the county and continued to prevent their return until the 1990s (after some protest marches in 1987). There was no KKK in the state at the time, these were just "normal" citizens, who, with the help of the sheriff (who later joined the Klan), distorted southern justice and a president (Woodrow Wilson) who supported and spread segregation, managed to keep their county all white for decades. I cannot express how disgusted I was by this story.

The book was very thoroughly researched, but on the other hand, the perpetrators had no interest in hiding their actions because they saw nothing wrong with them. To this day, there has been no compensation to the families of the people who were driven out and had their property stolen. In fact there is no acknowledgment of the racial cleansing in the historical society or anywhere else in this appalling county. Considering that the predecessors of these people had previously driven out the Cherokee and stolen their property, I guess the people of Forsyth County had reason to believe that they could get away with anything. Sadly, they were correct.

I received a free copy of the e-book from the publisher, however I wound up borrowing and listening to the audiobook from the library. The audiobook was narrated by the author and he did a pretty good job with the narration.