Hamilton Books
Pages: 122
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-7618-5549-1 • Paperback • June 2011 • $44.99 • (£35.00)
978-0-7618-5550-7 • eBook • September 2011 • $42.50 • (£35.00)
Judith G. Yates Shearer lives and writes near the lakes in western Kentucky. She holds an MFA in writing from Spalding University and teaches part-time at Murray State University. This is her first book.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Cassy Waits
Chapter 2: What Does Lie Beneath
Chapter 3: This County Named Christian
Chapter 4: Murder at a Well
Chapter 5: Riding a Death Wagon
Chapter 6: Afterwards
All Bones Be White is a profound story of two women, one black and one white, who find each other across time and circumstance. It's a book of healing and remembrance, a book that refuses to ignore the history below our feet and the human beings who gave their lives so that we might live. Like Shearer, we are drawn into Cassy's life, like Shearer we imagine how it could have been, how it should have been, and how we hope it may never be again.
— Rebecca Walker, author of One Big Happy Family, Baby Love, and Black, White and Jewish
It takes equal amounts of passion, talent and nerve to try to fathom a forgotten life. Through her determined efforts to unearth the history of a slave named Cassy, Judith Shearer brings to light difficult truths about race in America, and about the invisible bonds that make us who we are.
— Cathleen Medwick, author of Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul
Shearer's book All Bones Be White brings Cassy back to life, and we learn about the extenuating circumstances of what happened that day long ago. Shearer above all shows us Cassy's humanity. We feel as if we're right there with her in her jail cell as Cassy tells us her story, in her simple affecting way. It's a story of a human spirit standing up to power. Even in defeat, the dignity of that spirit remains. Cassy will haunt you, as she has me.
— Richard Goodman, author of A New York Memoir, The Soul of Creative Writing, and French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France