In the Pines

"A gripping investigation."—People Magazine

“An important story … enriched by the urgency of national and personal reckoning.”—Booklist

"Remarkable...Hale deftly captures the racial terror of the Jim Crow South."—John Grisham, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Lies, distortions, and ignorance have obscured the pain and tragedy of racial terror lynchings in America for decades. We will never recover from this violent history without truth-telling, which makes Grace Hale's courageous and compelling book so essential and critically important.”—Bryan Stevenson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy

“[A] riveting investigation of a family legend … Hale’s narrative is both deeply personal and steeped in the history of the rural Deep South. It’s a harrowing look at white supremacist violence and the lies that allowed it to flourish.”—Publishers Weekly

“[A] thoughtful narrative… In the Pines is elevated by lovely writing… It is also marked by incisive thinking about race in history and in the present. Hale's work is a significant contribution to that larger conversation."—Shelf Awareness

“A profound act of narrative repair, in which a sheriff’s granddaughter, now a renowned historian, rolls up her sleeves to rip the dressing off one of the nation’s deepest wounds—one in which her own beloved grandfather was complicit. Fierce and unflinching, with moments of startling beauty as well as horror, this myth-breaking history dives into our nation’s darkest past, exposing not just what we have done but how we must learn to speak of these realities. In Hale’s essential recounting, Versie Johnson cannot return to life, but the memory of this murdered man’s life and death are justly summoned, and past becomes powerfully present.”—Ilyon Woo, New York Times bestselling author of Master Slave Husband Wife

“In this utterly absorbing narrative, Grace Hale reckons with America’s history of white supremacy through the lens of her own personal inheritance. In the Pines is intimate, devastating, and historically meticulous—a must-read, and more relevant than ever.”—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove

“In confronting her family’s involvement in the lynching of a Black man in 1940s Mississippi, Grace Elizabeth Hale deftly mines Southern history and gives voice to its unspoken truths. In the Pines is a brave exploration of the persistence of white supremacy not only in the South but more broadly in American culture.”—W. Ralph Eubanks, author of A Place Like Mississippi and Ever Is a Long Time

“Grace Hale is a phenomenal historian, a dogged researcher, and a gifted writer. In this fascinating new book, she trains her talents on the troubled racial history of her own family, with riveting results.”—Kevin M. Kruse, author of One Nation Under God and co-editor of the New York Times bestselling Myth America

“Grace Hale writes with the power of fiction as she uses her family’s past to reveal the long, tragic history of violence against Black Americans to preserve white supremacy. An intimate, wrenching story, In the Pines deserves to be read by every American.”—William Ferris, author of The Storied South and Grammy Award–winning creator of Voices of Mississippi