“Boady, the men who beat and murdered those people for all those years, do you think they simply disappeared because someone passed a law?”
A colored, divorced woman, Lida Poe, goes missing in the small town of Jessup, Missouri in the 70’s. The town is painted in racism and composed of prejudice beliefs. Growing up in Jessup, teenage Boady Sanden considers himself an average young man and doesn’t realize the segregation and discrimination until he befriends his new neighbors and sees the reaction from certain town members. Boady begins to recognize his own racial thoughts while he and his new friend, Thomas, get pulled into the middle of the Lida Poe murder case. Was there more to her murder case than what was being disclosed?
“You’ll never change what a person thinks in their head or what they feel in their heart by passing a law. If a man doesn’t want to look at who he is deep down, he’s not going to much care what the law says about it.”
I really loved the setting of the novel and watching Boady purge the racial stigmas that he had grown up hearing and believing. The friendship he creates with Thomas, his neighbor, was my favorite part of the novel. While the book obviously centers on overcoming prejudices in the 1970’s, the target for the reader is identifying and conquering our own prejudices, even including predispositions, whatever those might be.
The focus of the story isn’t the murder of Lida Poe, but her murder is used in the growth of the plot and character development. The story centers around Boady and his surroundings; like his peers in school who are blinded by racism and let those feelings drive their actions.
**There is a lot of racial slander in this novel. Violence and hate crimes occur.**
Pictured below is the face of young Emmett Till who is mentioned in the book a few times during the dialogue. Beaten, drowned, and then burned alive, read about the murder of Emmett Till here.
Allen Eskens is the author of award-winning book The Life We Bury.
He is a best-selling author. Nothing More Dangerous is his sixth book. To view all of his books, and the order to read them in, click here.
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