Author(s): Eleanor Henderson ISBN: 9780008158699 Binding: Paperback Published: 2017-10-01 Tender and savage, heart-breaking and hopeful, and deeply human, The Twelve Mile Straight combines the intimacy of a family drama with the grandeur of an American epic and will appeal to fans of American classics by Harper Lee, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: in a house full of secrets, two babies – one light-skinned, the other dark – are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town.Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her impulsive father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who is as close to Elma as a sister. It soon becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have imagined. A web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the truth.