Praying for Sheetrock : A Work of Nonfiction - Softcover

Greene, Melissa Fay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0436201127 ISBN 13: 9780436201127

Publisher: Seeker & Warburg, 1992

Synopsis

A novel about the political awakening of a small black community in Georgia in the 1970s. It traces the downfall of a flamboyant white sheriff and his gang, and of the rise and tragic downfall of a disabled black boilermaker. Shortlisted in America for the 1991 National Book Award.

About this title

Review:

Despite what it said in the New York Times or the Congressional Record, not everybody in America got the word right away about the civil rights movement. Thus it was that well into the 1970s, McIntosh County in backwoods Georgia remained a place where the black majority still had never elected one of their own to any county office, where black kids were bused away from the white school, and where the white county sheriff had his hand in every racket there was. Praying for Sheetrock is the saga of how, thanks to the leadership of a black shop-steward-turned-county-commissioner named Thurnell Alston, together with the aid of a cadre of idealistic Legal Services lawyers (Melissa Greene was one of their paralegals) this situation began to change. The story, written as grippingly as a novel, is charged with twists that only nonfiction can deliver; for example, Alston, for all the brave good he did, ultimately got caught in a federal sting and went to jail while the corrupt sheriff walked. This is, writes Greene, a story of "large and important things happening in a very little place."

From the Inside Flap:

"A a monumental social history...Through a combinaton of oral history and interpretive narrative, Greene has created a work of great drama, a chorus of voices that is both disturbing and inspiring."
THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
Somehow, the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement had bypassed rural McIntosh County, Georgia. In the 1970s, the white sheriff there still wielded all power; he controlled everyone and everything. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man with a passion for justice to take him on and win, changing life in McIntosh County forever. PRAYING FOR SHEETROCK is about that one man, his victory and his utlimate fall from grace.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seeker & Warburg
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0436201127
• ISBN 13: 9780436201127
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 346