The Twelve-Mile Straight

The Twelve-Mile Straight
Eleanor Henderson

‘Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent’ Ann Patchett‘A superb novel whose roots can be traced to Harper Lee and Carson McCullers‘ Oprah MagazineGenus Jackson was killed in Cotton County, Georgia, on a summer midnight in 1930, when the newborn twins were fast asleep.They lay head to toe in a cradle meant for one, Winnafred on one side and Wilson on the other.Only if you looked closely – and people did – could you see that the girl was pink as a piglet, and the boy was brown.In a house full of secrets, two babies – one light-skinned, the other dark – are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper’s daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town.Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her impulsive father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who is as close to Elma as a sister. It soon becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have imagined. A web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the truth.

Copyright (#ulink_919b2a7f-171c-5bea-9794-d252431e14f7)

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, in 2017

This eBook edition published in 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Eleanor Henderson

Eleanor Henderson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, for reprinted excerpts here (#litres_trial_promo) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s November 28, 1930, Warm Springs, Georgia, radio address, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00416 (http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00416).

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it either are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008158682

Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008158712

Version: 2018-06-04

Dedication (#ulink_57dae26a-6f32-5b91-af6e-ed5c3cf79bb9)

For my father, Billy

Epigraph (#ulink_b593fd6c-57eb-59c3-8d18-1de26118ca34)

And the children struggled within her; and she said, If it be so,

why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord.

And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb.

—GENESIS 25:22–23

Contents

Cover (#u67fe94c3-ff4e-5e8d-b7b8-0c1e5dde54f0)

Title Page (#u76687869-ff41-5e65-8aa8-7657a117cf42)

Copyright (#ud1efc862-c13d-5612-801b-6b8d071240b1)

Dedication (#u75227946-bc94-56f2-be83-819be0d60bdb)

Epigraph (#u3909a6f1-77bd-5e01-a8b1-90debee7cee2)

Part I (#u278fdb75-f084-5d43-abb5-15461c61ce4f)

One (#u92f81eed-bbe1-5614-94d0-0817bf37876f)

Two (#u01f567f5-cea2-54fb-a238-b8a6caaf42e4)

Three (#udbfd02df-245c-5446-a43d-1db3cfad47e7)

Four (#u1a3be118-16be-50a0-a609-bca8ffa727a3)

Five (#u43b1344c-c487-59b0-84d1-f198e7c44208)

Six (#u17c32319-f8cc-5624-9ad0-5875ea227b78)

Seven (#u1f7f1781-accc-5868-acd1-27243510151c)

Eight (#u0c9d4670-719b-5218-8105-07e4d8e4f430)

Nine (#u6653f905-abae-5f88-a171-e8d7a6ea9868)

Ten (#ue6d9e088-c730-58ef-bbdf-9bb240d391a0)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)