Guardian Review

By Author: Adelaide.White
Total Articles: 41
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The year is 1946, and the place is Davis, identified only as a small town in the Deep South. Ansel Anderson is 14 years old, the son of the owner of Anderson's General Store. Ansel's best friend is Willie Benton, but Ansel's father, Bert, disapproves of the friendship between the boys because Willie is black. He has hired Willie as a summer worker only at the request of Esther Davis.

Esther is the daughter of Zeph Davis, or "Cap'n" Davis as he was known in the town named for him. She has been educated in Massachusetts and would not have come home to Davis at all had her mother not needed her to care for her ailing father. Her brother, Zeph, and his son, Zeph III, have stepped in to fill Cap'n Davis's shoes now that he has died. Willie is sometimes known as "Little Willie" to distinguish him from his father, "Big Willie." Big Willie has Rolex Watches returned from World War II so shell-shocked that he is unable to do much in the way of work. Esther Davis arranges for him to become a caretaker at the church. She pays his salary, though Big Willie believes he is paid by the church.

Ansel ...
... has a crush on Mary Susan, daughter of the new preacher. But Zeph III also likes Mary Susan. She is not interested in him; indeed, she is afraid of him, but not even her father can protect her from the all-powerful Davis clan. Then Mary Susan is murdered in her father's church. Zeph III has a knife, is covered with blood, and is the obvious perpetrator, but he blames the rape and murder on Big Willie. Big Willie has seen the murder, has seen Zeph III commit the crime, but when Zeph accuses him of the crime, no one chooses to believe Big Willie. Ansel begs his father to intervene, but his father not only ignores his son's pleas, he provides the rope for Big Willie's lynching and keeps the store open late to profit from sales to the gathering crowd. After Big Willie is lynched, Ansel's mother asks Esther Davis to take Ansel away from Davis. Esther agrees to take him back to Massachusetts with her as she can no longer live in the situation in which she finds herself. Having sent her son away, Maureen Anderson then dies of an overdose of sleeping pills. Her marriage to Bert was required because she was pregnant with Ansel, and she has been miserable for years. Having provided for her son, she now chooses to leave the world.

This is a powerful book and emotionally difficult to read. Julius Lester, in his Author's Note at the end of the book, says that he had Replica Tag Heuer wanted, once, to see a children's novel about a white boy who had been present at a lynching. He also gives statistics about lynching, including a list of states in which lynchings occurred. There are 44 states on the list. Due to the adult content, this book may be more appropriate for older young adults.