In the Pines

A Lynching, a Lie, a Reckoning

By: Grace Elizabeth Hale, John Grisham - foreword

Narrated by: Nicole Swanson, Matt Godfrey

“Courageous and compelling…essential and critically important.” —Bryan Stevenson

An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.

Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird, with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth.

Years later, as a rising scholar of white supremacy, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South—because Johnson's death, she found, was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.

A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, In the Pines casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Grace Elizabeth Hale (P)2023 Little, Brown & Company

Critic reviews

“Lies, distortions, and ignorance have obscured the pain and tragedy of racial terror lynchings in America for decades. We will never recover from this violent history without truth-telling, which makes Grace Hale's courageous and compelling book so essential and critically important.” (Bryan Stevenson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy)

“Grace Hale writes with the power of fiction as she uses her family’s past to reveal the long, tragic history of violence against Black Americans to preserve white supremacy. An intimate, wrenching story, In the Pines deserves to be read by every American.” (William Ferris, author of The Storied South and Grammy Award–winning creator of Voices of Mississippi)

“In this utterly absorbing narrative, Grace Hale reckons with America’s history of white supremacy through the lens of her own personal inheritance. In the Pines is intimate, devastating, and historically meticulous—a must-read, and more relevant than ever.” (Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove)

Difficult truth

Family stories, factual history and story telling speculation woven together very well. This puts so much not to distant history into perspective relative to modern times.

Well researched and well written

The author did a great job of making this important history come alive for her readers.

Quite possibly the best book I've listened to this year

The plot within the plot was awesome. The story was riveting, and extremely well researched.

In the Pines

I loved how she used such detail to explain what happened. Outstanding job and amazing research!

Awful book racist writer!

Most racist book I have ever heard. The writer should be ashamed! John Grisham shouldn’t have attached himself to this pig!

Disappointing

The story was lacking the depth I had hoped for especially after listening to introduction. Disappointing overall. Wish I hadn’t wasted my credit on this book.

No story

This book is just a reading of facts. There is no real story line. It’s just a recitation of facts and events that happened during the Jim Crow era. I was disappointed.