Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File

The Till family; Emmett, murdered aged fourteen; Emmett’s father, court-martialled and hanged. A flashpoint of the civil rights movement, this is the story of two generations, as John Edgar Wideman examines the intertwined fates of father and son.Weaving a narrative of truth and fiction, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and intimacy to this devastating story. At once a conversation between generations, fathers and sons, the living and the dead, Writing to Save a Life is also an essential commentary on racism, history and the American prison system today.

Reviews of Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File

At times melancholy, at others raw and rippling with rage, Wideman masterfully weaves together memory, history and archival documents . . . Haunting, provocative, and inspired * * Washington Post * * A mercurial coupling of fact and fiction from a profound writer — RICHARD FORD A quietly harrowing postscript to the tragedy of Emmett Till . . . A searching account * * New York Times Book Review * * A great American writer — JOY WILLIAMS A genre-defying mix of history, biography, and memoir * * Philadelphia Inquirer * * Haunting * * New York Magazine * * A book seething with the passion and sense of outrage behind the Black Lives Matter movement that also traces specific roots of the movement's genealogy * * Kirkus Reviews * *