Search - Billy

"Albert French lights up the monstrous face of American racism in this harrowing tale of ten-year-old Billy Lee Turner, who is convicted of and executed for murdering a white girl in Banes County, Mississippi, in 1937. "Billy" is about the deaths of two children, one girl, one boy, the girl's death an accident, the boy's a murder perpetrated by the state. Narrated by an anonymous observer in the rich accents of the region, constructed in a series of powerfully lean vignettes, "Billy" imparts an intensity that is nearly unbearable.
Albert French evokes with cinematic vividness the picking fields and town streets; the heat, the dust, the unrelenting sun, the poverty of 1930s Mississippi."

In 1937 in Banes County, Mississippi, 10 year old Billy Lee Turner is convicted for murdering a white girl.

This story is an unsentimental and ultimately heart-rending vision of racial injustice.

I cannot say enough good things about the way this book was written. Billy Lee Turner is a 10 year old boy who lives in the South during the late 1930's. He gets convicted and executed for a tragic accident where he killed a white girl who was bullying him. This book is so intense because of the racial tension in the South during that time, and a poor little boy who doesn't even realize what he did was wrong, and just wants to go home. He was wrongly executed at such a young age, but there was nothing anyone could, or would do about it. It's heartbreaking and very realistic.

http://www.hoteatsandcoolreads.com/2012/04/book-review-billy-by-albert-french.html