A free, unsullied land
By: Maggie Kast
Publisher: Fomite
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Burlington, Vermont
Language: eng
Number of pages: 354
ISBN-13: 9781942515210
Subjects: Self-realization in women; Fiction; Bildungsromans
Description: Nineteen-year-old Henriette Greenberg takes her first steps away from an abusive home on the dance floor of a Chicago jazz dive in prohibition-era Chicago and is enraptured by this new music. Struggling to escape a mother who doesn't like girls and a father who likes young women all too well, she submerges herself in bad sex and political action. She meets and falls in love with Dilly Brannigan, a graduate student in anthropology. Ignoring his warnings, she travels to Scottsboro, Alabama to protest the unfair conviction of nine young black men accused of rape. She adopts Dilly's work as her own. A powerful funeral ritual gives her hope of re-writing her family story but tempts her to violate an Apache taboo, endangering her life, her love, and her longed-for escape from home.
Notes: Etchings Press (University of Indianapolis) Whirling Prize entry