Barbara R. (Crop4Fun) reviewed on 6/14/2008 + 1217 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

"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."

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