The Nickel Boys

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead   214 pages

"As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men.""

Of course, you can see where this is going: The Nickel Academy is not a good place. That's putting it mildly; in fact, it is a place of horror, fear, sadism and desperation.  Elwood isn't supposed to be there, but he keeps thinking that if he follows the rules, he'll be able to go home.  But of course, we, the readers, know that this isn't possible; once a black kid is in this place, he's only leaving to go into jail or a grave.

Told with the narration of Elwood, this story is based on the real story of a reform school in Florida (that yes, was as horrifying as you think it was, operating for more than 100 years).  You get some present-time storytelling, and then go back into the past.  Elwood is determined and to me, had a steady light inside himself that the Nickel Academy couldn't quite extinguish.  However, this is not an easy read and it's the kind of book where I found it a compelling read, but one where I sometimes needed to put the book down and read something else for a bit.  Definitely a very good, thought-provoking book.

Intruder in the Dust

Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner         Audio Book:  8 hrs.  11mins         Paperback Book:  256 pages        

This was a well-written tale of a black man being subjected to Southern justice in a backwater town.   The black man is accussed of killing a white member of the most influential family in the county.     The evidence was circumstantial and the black man knowing he was being railroaded hires a (family-tied) lawyer.     Everyone in town including the lawyer assumes the man is guilty and the defendant does not spell out the facts he knows just tells the lawyer to check the bullet hole(s).    By this time the murdered man is already buried so there is a whole big hurrah getting to the details on this case which I will let the reader find out for themselves.   I will say this about the writer,  William Faulkner is a good writer who can describe a thing to a t so that there is no mistaking his intention, however, having said that, I have to also mention that Mr. Faulkner must be paid by the word because he will take 4 pages to say what he could have said in a paragraph.   I found it annoying having to wade through all the flowery prose and his going 40 miles around a topic just to come back to it and draw a simple conclusion.    This happens so many times throughout the story that I often forgot what his original point was by the time he concluded his philabustering.   But the story was a good one if you trim the fat of his oratories and get to the meat of his intended tale.    I liked the story itself but found his wool gathering to be way too much.   For that reason I hesitate to offer my recommendation for this book.    A good story that is WAAAY overtold.    I don't plan on reading any more of Mr. Faulkner's works any time soon as the frustration of his over wordy soliloquies are frustrating to the story he means to tell.

- Shirley J

I'll Take My Stand

I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition by 12 Southerners, 385 pages

The twentieth century was a time in American history when virtually everyone in a position of power or influence - from Ivy League intellectuals and Washington politicians to the members of the local Chamber of Commerce - sought an answer to the problems created by "progress" in more and more "progress", a faster and faster race to the bottom of the spiral of their neverending war with nature.  In such a time, the "backwardness" of the South became an advantage.  I'll Take My Stand, first published in 1930, collects twelve essays that cut deeply against the prevailing grain, calling for an anti-industrial counter-revolution and a reconnection with the land.  In complimentary but not identical ways the authors sought the development of more human ways of living, emerging from their own integral humanism, an awareness that a truly human life cannot be founded on mechanism with culture added, but must begin with a humane foundation.

Any book rooted in the Old South must face the issue of race, and it is here, unsurprisingly, that I'll Take My Stand has its greatest problems.  Generally, blacks are treated as invisible, or worse, as the unwitting dupes of Northern interests.  The history of slavery is revised so as to absolve the South of all moral responsibility, with the Civil War cast as a simple power struggle between centralizing Northern interests and the provincialist South.  Fortunately, the authors' racial attitudes (which some of them, at least, later revised), although distracting, do not effect the power of the book's central arguments.  Those are of interest to anyone who shares in the perpetual hope that intelligence may yet conquer greed.

Natchez Burning

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles
791 Pages


Penn Cage is back and things get off to a bad start when his father Tom Cage is charged with the murder of a former nurse of his, Viola.  Tom Cage won't talk to his son about what happened and it soon becomes apparent that the whole affair has its roots in the 60's when a splinter group of the KKK called the Double Eagles were terrorizing the area.

 Iles was in a car accident that nearly killed him which caused the delay of this book.  It's been five years since Iles put out a new book and patrons have been anxiously  awaiting this volume. This will be the first of a planned trilogy which rumor has is already written so hopefully the wait won't be as long.