QUARTER MOON A NOVEL OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH

A Black man flees his home after a terrible act of violence in this historical novel.

In 1934, Willie Lee Jameson, a descendant of enslaved people, is having an affair with a married Black woman named Emmy. Willie Lee wants to leave Charlotte’s Bend, Mississippi, and head west to California with Emmy, even though Emmy is a doting stepmother to her husband’s children. They get caught together, and the white men who catch them beat Willie Lee badly. Shortly after that, he gets fired from his job. He struggles to keep a job in Natchez, but he manages to save some money so he and Emmy can leave Mississippi and have a life together. Then Emmy’s husband announces they’re moving to Chicago. At the same time, Willie Lee meets a man named Wise who gives him the guidance he needs to go west. Before he can leave, though, he has a vicious run-in that ends with the death of a white man. Now Willie Lee must flee; he grabs Emmy, and they make a run for it. They wend their way toward California, running into frequent obstacles. Emmy’s husband doesn’t intend to let her go, and there’s an unrelenting sense of danger. The white men in Ford’s novel are pure evil, and a sense of dread infuses everything Willie Lee does. The constant threat of violence makes the novel a difficult read, emotionally—although Willie Lee does occasionally get some help from kind strangers along the way. The dialogue is written in dialect that some readers may struggle with (“Schoolin’? Naw suh, I ain’t got much use fo’ it out yonder where I’m at”), but the novel is clearly well-researched, and the resolution is an unexpected but interesting surprise.

A brutal, adventurous tale of Black life in the Depression-era South.