That Pinson Girl

In a bleak Mississippi farmhouse, seventeen-year-old Leona Pinson gives birth to a son attended only by her dwarf aunt. Leona refuses to name the child’s father and lives her life in isolation. Her father has died two years before in a shooting Leona doesn’t believe was accidental. Her mother is distant, haunted by her own devastating secret. Luther Biggs, the son of Leona’s grandfather and a former Pinson slave, is her only ally against her brother, Raymond, who inhabits a world of nightriders and violence. When the father of Leona’s child returns with a wife after the war, Leona’s dreams of escape from her cruel existence shatter. Ultimately, the secrets and lies that bind Leona’s family and Luther’s are laid bare, with devastating consequences. Told against a backdrop of the deprivation of World War I, the tragedies of the influenza epidemic, and the burden of generations of betrayals, That Pinson Girl unfolds in lyrical and unflinching prose, engaging timeless issues of racism, sexism, and poverty.