by Minrose Gwin
_______________. The Klan Unmasked. 1954. Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic Univ. Press, 1990.
King, Larry L. Confessions of a White Racist. New York: Viking, 1969.
Massengill, Reed. Portrait of a Racist: The Man Who Killed Medgar Evers. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
McDowell, Deborah E. Leaving Pipe Shop: Memories of Kin. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
McIlhany, William H. II. Klandestine: The Untold Story of Delmar Dennis and His Role in the FBI’s War Against the Ku Klux Klan. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1975.
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York: Laurel Books, 1968.
Neilsen, Melany. Even Mississippi. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.
Rockwood, Roy. Bomba the Jungle Boy: The Swamp of Death. New York: McLoughlin, 1929.
Salter, John R. Jr. Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism. Hicksville, NY: Exposition, 1979.
Sims, Patsy. The Klan. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Taulbert, Clifton L. Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. Tulsa: Council Oak Books, 1989.
Vollers, Maryanne. Ghosts of Mississippi. Boston: Little, Brown, 1995.
About the Author
MINROSE GWIN is the author of the memoir Wishing for Snow, cited by Booklist as “eloquent” and “lyrical”—“a real life story we all need to hear.” She has written three scholarly books and coedited The Literature of the American South. She teaches contemporary fiction at UNC–Chapel Hill and, like her young protagonist, grew up in a small Mississippi town.
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Praise for
The Queen of Palmyra
“Here it is, the most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird. Writing from deep within the belly of the beast, Minrose Gwin tells the story through the voice of Florence Irene Forrest, a girl growing up in a segregated Mississippi community where her father is a secret Klan leader while her main support comes from an African-American family. A story about knowing and not knowing, The Queen of Palmyra is finally a testament to the ultimate power of truth and knowledge, language and love.”
—Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill
“Minrose Gwin is an extremely gifted writer and The Queen of Palmyra is a brilliant and compelling novel. Set in Mississippi in the volatile civil rights era and then in New Orleans with the impending devastation of Hurricane Katrina, this novel powerfully reveals the effects of both human and natural destruction. The beauty of the prose, the strength of voice, and the sheer force of circumstance will hold the reader spellbound from beginning to end.”
—Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes
“The Queen of Palmyra is an exquisitely beautiful novel. Through the eyes of a young girl, Minrose Gwin confronts the tragic face of racism and shows how it twists and destroys lives in a small southern town. Written with unflinching honesty, the novel grips the reader from its first page and relentlessly drives us to its conclusion.”
—William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues
ALSO BY MINROSE GWIN
Wishing for Snow: A Memoir
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photograph by Roger Charity/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
P.S.™ is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE QUEEN OF PALMYRA. Copyright © 2010 by Minrose Gwin. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gwin, Minrose.
The Queen of Palmyra: a novel / Minrose Gwin.—1st Avon paperback ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-184032-6 (pbk.)
1. Race relations—Fiction. 2. Mississippi—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3607.W56Q44 2010
813'.6—dc22 2010003785
EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199253-7
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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