No emotion eats at your soul like shame, that feeling of having violated yourself, of having done something so wrong you can't imagine how to go on living.

1946.

Davis, a town in the Deep South.

Big Willie, a black man is accused of a crime he did not commit.

Ansel, a white boy and his father Bert know the truth.

Why do they watch on in silence as Big Willie is lynched

Told from the perspective of fourteen-year-old Ansel, Julius Lester delivers a haunting and poignant novel about the cruelty of prejudice and the possibility of redemption. Equally shocking is the author's note about the history of lynching in the south and recorded statistics of lynching by state and race. Ansel will never forget the lynching of Big Willie, and young adults will never forget reading this profound novel.