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Written by 
- Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
- Publisher: Broadway
- On Sale: March 27, 2007
- Price: $14.95
- ISBN: 978-0-307-34188-4 (0-307-34188-7)
about this book
The brutal lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930, cast a shadow over the town that still lingers; but is only one event in the long and complicated history of race relations in Marion, a history much ignored and considered by many to be best forgotten.
In Our Town journalist Cynthia Carr explores the issues of race, loyalty, and memory in America through the lens of a specific hate crime that occurred in Marion but could have happened anywhere.
“Cynthia Carr goes deep into the heart of our national darkness--the public ritual of violence we call the lynching. Carr investigates its aftermath in a small town and, page by page, we understand everything that we can, experiencing the shock, disgust, and the harrowing heartbreak that always attends murder wearing the blues mask of ‘rough justice.’ Carr’s clear-eyed rendering of her quest follows the transformation of that murder from a rumor to a collective act to a disputed fact that sits uneasily in the memory of a community.”
-- Stanley Crouch, author of The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity
"This outstanding narrative is an excellent companion to last year's Blood Done Sign My Name... which also used crime as an entry point into the struggle for civil rights."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
