2002 AML Award for the Novel Presented to: Chris Crowe For: Mississippi Trial 1955 Phyllis Fogelman Books (New York), 10 June 2002. 231 pages. ISBN: 0-803727-45-3

In August of 1955, a 14-year-old black boy named Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by white men for the so-called crime of whistling at a white woman. His murderers were subsequently tried and acquitted, despite vast evidence against them. Crowe's novel places a teenaged white boy at the center of this conflict, torn between his loyalty to his beloved grandfather, an avowed racist, and the teachings of his father, who left the South to escape a society he despised. This very personal story of a young man's gradual awakening to the truth about the town and the grandfather he has always loved adds emotional depth to the factual account of this too-little-known episode in the struggle for civil rights.

Blending contemporary newspaper accounts with his fictional narrative, Crowe's depiction of the racial attitudes endemic to the South at the time is chillingly accurate. Evocative descriptive passages and a superb grasp of dialect make the story eminently readable, but it is the characterization that makes it extraordinary. In a novel fraught with tension between races, it is no easy task to humanize rather than demonize, and Crowe has succeeded in making even the worst villain frighteningly comprehensible. How much more comforting to believe that those motivated by such unreasoning hatred are devoid of all virtues; yet Crowe leaves the reader no such comfort as he depicts a man who genuinely believes in the inferiority of other races, and yet who deeply loves his wife, his grandson, and his community. We are reminded that even the most abstract struggles have, at their heart, people who are simply trying to understand what is right-even the ones who get it wrong. The Association for Mormon Letters is proud to present its award in the Novel to Mississippi Trial, 1955.

© 2003 The Association for Mormon Letters