Cy in Chains
In post-Reconstruction Georgia, Cy has befriended Travis, the white son of the volatile landowner for whom he and his father sharecrop. When Travis tries to run away, Cy tries to help, but he is instead implicated in Travis’ drowning death. Cy is captured, blindfolded, and taken far away, where he spends the next several years in a forced labor camp, chained almost 24 hours a day. Amidst the reprehensible conditions and constructs of the chain gang, Cy contemplates the nature of life, death, God, and friendship as he struggles to weigh the hefty risk of escaping into freedom versus his eventual but certain death in bondage. Cy’s and the other boys’ backstories offer a rich picture of the time. Cy’s narrative is harrowing, and even so, it likely takes it easy on the descriptions of the deplorable conditions in the for-profit labor camps in which young “offenders” were kept often for no other reason than being black. Not for the faint of heart, but a thought-provoking, valuable look at an overlooked episode in American history. Grades 7-10. --Heather Booth