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True crime

BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN

Gilbert King

A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found

From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret.

In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in her home while her husband is away. She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading journalist Mabel Norris Reese cannot stop fretting over the case and its baffling outcome. Who was protecting whom, or what? She pursues the story for years, chasing down leads, hitting dead ends, winning unlikely allies. Bit by bit, the unspeakable truths behind a conspiracy that shocked a community into silence begin to surface. Beneath a Ruthless Sun tells a powerful, page-turning story rooted in the fears that rippled through the South as integration began to take hold, sparking a surge of virulent racism that savaged the vulnerable, debased the powerful, and roils our own times still. Gilbert King was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction for The Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, which was also a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A featured contributor to Smithsonian magazine and The Marshall Project, King also writes about justice for The New York Times and The Washington Post. He lives in New York City.

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Book Published 2018-04-24 by Riverhead

Comments

Exposes the sinister complexity of American racism...King tells this... story with grace and sensitivity, and his narrative never flags. His mastery of the materials is complete. Read more...

[A] powerful page-turner.

The plot against Daniels seems baffling, verging on nonsensical - until you begin to see the community the way King does: so deformed by racial animus and misogyny that the white establishment of Lake County deemed it less of an "indignity" for Knowles to have been raped by a white man than a black man. Timely and important. Read more...

[King's] style is gentle but insistent. It's laid out cleanly, with precision and without condemnation. If the reader is interested to understand how painstakingly the book is researched, King provided 21 pages of detailed notes sourcing the details in hundreds of interviews and records that he spent four years gathering. And there lies the secret to the power behind King's books: Truth. He speaks truth to a community that has kept its lips pursed together for the last 60 years, and we know it. Read more...

A spellbinding true story of racism, privilege, and official corruption.. From the opening pages, King's narrative barrels forward, leaving readers wondering what it will take for justice to prevail. By turns sobering, frightening, and thrilling, this meticulous account of the power and tenacity of officially sanctioned racism recalls a dark era that America is still struggling to leave behind.

"Gilbert King's stunning chronicle of race, sex and power in fatal combination yields so many truly tragic turns that it's almost uncanny when goodness endures. With breakneck drama and cold clarity, Beneath a Ruthless Sun captures the sultry particulars of a uniquely charged place and time as well as a universal truth about how difficult it is for humans in the aggregate to do the right thing."

A book for true-crime aficionados as well as anyone interested in criminal justice reform. In it, King delves into a complicated rape case that is rife with corruption, and in doing so, he shines a light on issues of sex, race, and class.

This book reads like a first-rate crime thriller, built on shocking plot twists and vivid characters and evidence of the darkest corners of human nature. But it's not fiction... Beneath a Ruthless Sun reveals a story that is horrifying to read but must be remembered... This extraordinary book's story might have begun more than half a century ago, but it isn't history.

Remarkable... Beneath a Ruthless Sun is multiple books in one - a gripping true-crime narrative, a deeply wrenching story of American bigotry and corruption, and an inspiring tale of heroes fired by love and righteous fury... When we face moral catastrophe in our own communities, this extraordinary book suggests there's a similar route to inspiration and comfort: Look for the women who refuse to yield.

[A] true-crime masterwork.

Pulitzer Prize winner King returns with a new nonfiction story for those craving a Serial-esque fix. King provides a glimpse into the past that is equal parts enlightening,... and invariably un-put-downable.

In the tradition of Harper Lee, Gilbert King tells the story of a small southern town corrupted by racism, a perverse genteel honor, and utter disdain for poor "crackers." Three women stand out in this gripping tale of a falsely accused man: an unrelenting reporter, a mother, and a victim doubly victimized as a pawn of others' ambitions. In deftly unraveling a tragic mixture of lies, violence, and hatred, King powerfully reminds us how the unpalatable beliefs of 1957 haunt us still.

Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read.

Chilling... Beneath a Ruthless Sun plunges the reader deeply into the legal practices, civil rights battles, and stubborn sexual inequalities of the mid-20th century, but this fast-moving and impeccably sourced book is anything but a slog. Truth oftentimes beggars belief, and the "true" in "true crime" can be a promise that betrays as much as it entices. Not so with Gilbert King's scorching, compelling, and unfortunately - still entirely relevant new work.

UK: Abner Stein

King's book haunts as an uncurtained stare into history. His annotated research notes cover 25 pages and represent a narrative of fact that should challenge even the most skeptical reader. But the real power comes as King pulls back layer upon layer of the dark veils of complicity, revealing a history that is much darker than we might want to see - and much more current. Read more...

Gilbert King's new book has the potential to be the historical crime investigation that takes up the mantle from David Grann's sensation, Killers of the Flower Moon... King's book unfolds a conspiracy implicating institutional racism, mental healthcare, treatment of the mentally impaired, and the fabric of Southern town life in the buildup to a truly tumultuous era.

This book is every bit as gripping as the author's Pulitzer-winning Devil in the Grove (2012), which explored an earlier incident involving McCall and Reese. McCall, who served as sheriff until the early 1970s, emerges here as thoroughly despicable, and Reese, who was a supporting player in Devil in the Grove, steps onto center stage here and captivates us with her determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Gripping history, vividly told.

The perversions of justice under Jim Crow chart a devious path in this labyrinthine true crime saga. Packed with riveting characters and startling twists, King's narrative unfolds like a Southern gothic noir probing the recesses of a poisoned society. Read more...

Tense and stunning true-crime read... brilliantly investigating the deep-seated corruption in Lake County. His book's taut focus on a single case also shines a light onto larger issues of racial profiling, police corruption and the condition of Florida's mental institutions.