| Summary: |
It's 1951 and the last place in America any sane man wishes to visit is Thebes State Penal Farm (Colored) in Thebes, Mississippi. Up a dark river, surrounded by swamps and impenetrable piney woods, it's the Old South at its most brutal - a place of violence, racial terror and even more horrific rumours. Of the few who make the journey, black or white, even fewer return. But in that years, two men will come to Thebes. The first is Sam Vincent, the former prosecuting attorney of Polk County, Arkansas. With great misgivings Sam accepts a job from a smooth-talking Chicago lawyer to investigate a disappearance. Sam has heard of Thebes ans know that in the Negro culture he only imperfectly understands, the place has a special resonance of horror. Sam is a careful man. Before he leaves on this dangerous trip, he confesser his fears to his former investigator Earl Swagger, a Marine hero on Iwo Jima, veteran of the mob wars in Hot Springs, and now a sargent in the Arkansas State Police. Earl pledges that is Sam is not back by a certain time, he will come looking for him. Sam will bring his knowledge of the law, his compassion and his sense of the rational to Thebes but Earl will brin gonly his guns. What the encounter there is something beyond their wildest imaginations for evil. The dying black town is ruled by white deputies on horseback who are more like an occupying army than a police force. Each citizen of the town is in debt to the Store, the one remaining civic institution and the only escape is over the wild currents of the dark river that drowns as many people as it liberates. But nothing can prepare Earl for the prison itself when he becomes the first white inmate. It is a site of fear. Run by an aging madman with insane theories of racial purity, it is administered by a brutally efficient Stalin of a guard sargeant known only as Bigboy. The convicts call him the Whip Man - he can take a man's soul with his nine feet of braided catgut. Both Sam and Earl will be challenged to the limits of their strength by this place and will struggle not only for their own survival but with deeper questions: What does a man do when confronted with such evil? Can it be remedied? Can it be rectifiedm redirected, reformed? Or must it just be destroyed? An dif so, where would you find the men to destroy it? |
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