The Moon In Our Hands

February, 1918. A black man is brutally tortured, then burnt alive, in a small Tennessee town. In New York, Walter White, blond, blue-eyed, and exceptionally light-skinned, gets his first assignment in his new job with the NAACP: to get on a train down to that Tennessee town, pass as a white salesman, and discover who committed the crime. With these actual events as a starting point, The Moon In Our Hands paints a portrait of White, now an all-but-forgotten figure in the history of Civil Rights, as he fearlessly works his way into both the good-old-boy network of the town and the besieged African-American community. Everything, though, is not as it seems. As White struggles to establish guile and innocence in a foreign landscape, he must also confront his own questions of identity. When another lynching suddenly looms, he must decide just how much he will sacrifice to save a black life, and the white souls of Sibley Springs.

Praise & Reviews

“A brilliant retelling of one of the most thrilling…and forgotten episodes in the struggle for Civil Rights.”
–Gordon Parks

“The Moon In Our Hands– is a morality tale of vengeance, betrayal, hidden identities, and simmering lynch-mob violence. An edge-of-your-seat thriller.”
–John Berendt

“[A] literary tour-de-force of character insight and human motivation….”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“A completely absorbing look at race and human frailties.”
–Booklist, starred review