Title: Easter Lilly
First published: 1998
Description: Set in today's South, Easter Lilly is the story of a stunningly beautiful black woman who is accused of murdering a white man she claims was about to rape her; a New York civil rights attorney who's come running to save her from a certain death penalty; a gentlemanly county prosecutor who happens to be the brother of the slain man; and a cast of characters whose language and body rhythms make the sexual heat and humidity of the South palpable.

These characters tell the story themselves, Rashomon-like, rendering the death - and the events that precede and follow it - through their own eyes, and with their own voices, which are as different and as provocative as their individual views of the world. In a final courtroom scene, rivaled in intensity only by the killing itself, Wicker dares to leave us wondering: What, really, do we know about prejudice? And what is this thing we call justice?
Subjects: Fiction, Trials (Murder), African American women, Race relations, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, legal
Places: Southern States
LC classification: PS3573.I25 E2 1998