Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Ellen's Comments: It may be impossible for young people, or for older folks who have always lived in the North, to get their minds fully around race relations in the South before the Civil Rights movement. In Mudbound, Hillary Jordan peels back the skin to expose the unthinkable inhumanity that grows from a mindset ingrained through decades—centuries—of culture.
Through quirks of circumstance, the McAllan family is moved from a genteel life in Memphis to a cotton farm in Mississippi Delta country, where they are forced to live in the farmhouse that is little more than a sharecropper’s shack. Living with them is Pappy, Henry’s father, a vitriolic, supremely self-centered bigot. They are soon joined by Henry’s brother, Jamie, just back from combat in WWII.

What could, and should, be a mutually supportive friendship with the Jackson family, tenants on the farm, cannot be because of the impenetrable black/white barrier. Their son, Ronsel Jackson, is also just back from service—in the 761st Black Panther Battalion under Gen. Patton in Germany—and is dealing with readjustment to Delta ways.

Cultural restraints, ghosts of combat, vicissitudes of farming, intrafamily tensions, and the Ku Klux Klan are all players in this sad, sad story of the rural South. Check Status at GPL