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James Jennings
Author
Blue Wild Indigo
It’s 1954 in the red rock country town of Serafina, Oklahoma, where racial tensions are mounting in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in schools unconstitutional. When two White hoodlums sexually assault a Mexican girl and pin the blame on Woody Coats, a young Black man, they nearly get him lynched. Bachelor rancher Harry True knows Woody didn’t do it. So does his best friend’s wife, Bliss Stone, the woman Harry would have married if war hadn’t intervened. They know Woody is innocent because they saw him miles away the night of the crime at their secret trysting place. Harry and Bliss have a choice to make: come forward and exonerate Woody, an old family friend; or keep silent to conceal their affair. Violence erupts in Black and White parts of town as Harry and Bliss wrestle with what to do. They both dread what speaking up will cost them – friendship, family, respect – but soon learn that silence can cost more.
Reviews
In 1950’s Oklahoma, the Supreme Court judgment declaring segregation unconstitutional is in its infancy. Against the backdrop of this momentous event, young Black man Woody Coats is wrongly accused of raping a teenage Mexican girl. The only two witnesses in his favor—Harry True and Bliss Farrell—are hesitant to come to his rescue; doing so will expose their secret affair, a potential disaster given that Bliss is the wife of Harry’s best friend. Torn between personal loyalties and doing the right thing, Harry and Bliss attempt to navigate their moral quandary in a town divided by racism and injustice.

Jennings’s primary focus revolves around Harry, though the novel extends beyond that microcosm to immerse readers in the intricate history of the United States in the early 1900s. The Second World War plays an important part in driving the plot in the initial chapters, touching on themes of patriotism, duty, and the sorrows of war, before transforming into a stark representation of the racial and social hierarchies of the time. Jennings uses the story’s central rape accusation to highlight the entrenched divisions between different ethnic groups, while simultaneously tackling the devastating trauma of sex crimes and the arduous fight for justice.

The novel benefits from its convincing cast, each character gifted with a strong voice that accurately reflects the story’s setting and time period. Harry’s worries about his secrets coming to light, despite his understanding that the town’s abuse of Woody is both deadly and wrong, is understandable but upsetting, given what’s at stake. His change of heart comes too late for some characters in the novel, and readers should be prepared for scenes of racial violence, rape, and cruelty that are painful to read but anchor the text to its historical context. Still, Jennings (author of Mirador) delivers an evocative portrait of a small town’s unrest and instability during a critical point in history.

Takeaway: Secrets and racial violence threaten to destroy a 1950s Oklahoma town.

Comparable Titles: Lynda Rutledge’s Mockingbird Summer, Trisha R. Thomas’s The Secret Keeper of Main Street.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

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