Nona Austin Roberts

On August 31, 1940, a beautiful warm summer night, a night when no one could have imagined that something so evil could happen, an innocent young White girl, barely fifteen, named Claudine Williams, was murdered under the White Bridge, in a small Southern town of Pixley, by Olin Chilton, a fourteen-year-old Negro boy who was immediately arrested, convicted, and forgotten until fourteen years later when Jake Ross, a Yankee attorney, comes to town and lets it be known that he is there to prove that the Negro boy was innocent.Rachael McAllister, the twenty-four-year-old young woman who is head librarian and town historian, is one of the first to encounter Mr. Ross when he comes to see her to request her permission to look at the town's records. Rachael knows nothing of his purpose, and since she believes that the books and the information in the library are for everyone--and the only requirement is that you follow the rules, she allows him unrestricted access.In the time of Jim Crow, the Southern town of Pixley is not about to let this Yankee attorney destroy their past and disparage their integrity without a fight, and a can of worms is opened, which ultimately involves the whole town.

When Sarah Madigan lost her three children to diphtheria, she also lost her hair and was shunned and thought to be crazy, a thought not far from her own assessment or her husband's. Broken in spirit and pregnant with her fourth child, she stole a Diary in which she found some release for her sorrow and pain. When the baby came, she was ready to begin again until her husband, bedridden after being trampled by his horse, secretly sent their fourth child away, pushing her to the edge of insanity and leaving her in charge of their farm with only an old ex-slave to help her.It is April 1910. Sarah Madigan's husband of ten years controls everything in her life. Without her baby son, she is desperate and tormented. The only thing keeping her going is her determination to do whatever she has to do to prove to her husband that she is capable and worthy so he will allow their child to come back home.