This is a blazing novel of love and guilt, by one of America’s greatest writers, that movingly explores the passions and prejudices that exist in the deep South.
Trapped in a wave of mob hysteria. Lucas Beauchamp, an elderly Negro who is accused of the murder of a white man, is in danger of being lynched. Gavin Stevens, an eminent local lawyer, is determined to see justice done, but the stubborn old man refuses his help. Instead, it is to Gavin’s sixteen-year-old nephew, Chick, that Lucas confides the truth. To save the old man, Chick undertakes an eerie assignment—to invade the graveyard in the dead of the night and dig up the body of the man Lucas is accused of killing!
In a desperate race against time and the lynch mob’s fury, Chick unlocks the secret of the grave, only to disclose a further mystery that baffles the bloodthirsty townspeople.