THE TWELVE-MILE STRAIGHT

From highly acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author Eleanor Henderson comes a powerful breakout novel: an audacious American epic about family, race, inequality and heredity set in rural Georgia during the years of the Depression and prohibition.

Cotton County, Georgia, 1930: two babies—one light-skinned, the other dark—are born to Elma Jesup, a farmer's daughter. Accused of rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged through the street behind a truck. In the aftermath, the farm's inhabitants, along with the people of the nearby town, are forced to contend with their roles and complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured. Slowly, questions begin to arise about both Genus' death and the twins' birth, questions which threaten to force long-buried secrets to the surface.

Despite the prying eyes and curious whispers of the townspeople, Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her mercurial father and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who Elma is as close to as a sister. But in an expansive yet propulsive narrative that incorporates multiple overlapping perspectives, startling revelations mount, and it becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined. Soon, a web of lies begins to collapse around the family, destabilizing their precarious world and forcing all to reckon with the painful truth.

Acclaimed author Eleanor Henderson has returned with a novel that combines the intimacy of a family drama with the staggering presence of a great Southern saga. Tackling themes of racialized violence, social division, and financial crisis, The Twelve-Mile Straight is startlingly timely, emotionally resonant, and a magnificent tour-de-force.

Eleanor Henderson was born in Greece, grew up in Florida, and attended Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in 2005. Her debut novel Ten Thousand Saints was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 by The New York Times and a finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from The Los Angeles Times. Her short stories have appeared in Agni, North American Review, Ninth Letter, Columbia, Salon, and The Best American Short Stories. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, All Things Considered, Poets & Writers, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She is an associate professor at Ithaca College.