Scottsboro

Set in the 1930s South, this resonant novel of race and class turns on the awful power of a lie. Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls, dressed in men’s overalls, emerge from another freight car. Though they show no signs of abuse, fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune,...