I'm fascinated by the West Memphis Three case, but the advocacy nature of so much of the available information (the documentaries, the wm3.org website) has always left me with the feeling I'm not getting the whole story. The main figures in the West Memphis and Arkansas justice system have long said that the movies and website skirt the true facts, and if those facts were known people would understand that the guilty parties are in prison. Leveritt wisely took this assertion as the premise of her book--she decided to put it to the test. She has done a brilliant, dispassionate job of it. My understanding of this case had deepened tenfold by the time I finished reading the book (as well as its exhaustive end notes). Every opportunity is given to advocates of the boys' guilt to bring to light those missing "true facts." It is utterly horrifying to see how this process actually casts more doubt on the case that the prosecutors and police created. The horror is compounded by the obvious fact that Leveritt is not presenting a slanted version of the story. She goes above and beyond to find those crucial "true facts" that will establish guilt. But it seems they don't exist.

The documentaries, website materials and other information about this case (I've been semi-obsessed with it since 1996) have always left vague, nagging doubts in my mind. This book erased them.

This book is yet another of many pieces that solidify (like we needed anymore proof really) that there are 3 men who are serving time in prison for a horrific crime they did not commit.Time is running out, at least litterally for one of them, Damien.Once you get hooked by this case, you will feel haunted by it.People, including celebrities, are standing behind these three men, demanding that true justice be served.This book took the challenge that was posed by the higher ups that were involved in the case, which was that in revealing all of the facts, people would know the truth. Well this book succeeded, but only to the demise of anything that the prosecution and law enforcement agents built up to be a case againt the three. This book is extensive with the facts of this case, and reveals the truth to be that sadly enough modern day Salem Witch Hunts take place in America.Please, help free these 3 men, before it is too late, especially since Damien is facing death. ...

Did you think that the days of the Salem Witch Trials were over? In this book, veteran true crime novelist Mara Leveritt gives us a thoroughly detailed and in-depth look at the Robin Hood Woods murders and how three innocent young people were sent to prison (two with life sentences and one to death row) because of what they believed, how they dressed, and the kind of music they listened to. Leveritt's intense passion for the truth and her ability to uncover it is highly evident. The world has a right to know how an inept police investigation, outright lies, and religious bias fueled the prosecution's case, culminating in one of the worst instances of abuse our legal system has ever known. Read this book and be very afraid because it could just as easily happen to you.

I gave this book a 4. I thought it was a great book. I enjoyed reading it.The reason I gave it a 4 and not a 5 is beause there were some parts of the story that I got confused and didnt understand what was going on.It took me a while to understand some of the stuff they were talking about.Some parts I thought were slow and kind of boring.I would have liked it if they showed T.J. having the conversation with the Wallaces about Mrs.Logan.
The Characters in this story were very realistic.The book was very well written with detail and as I was reading it I could picture what was going on.I liked how the book was written through the eyes of a young girl whose name was Cassey.Cassey was very brave and willing to do anything for her family.I think she takes after her Uncle Hammer.This book reminds me of the book Watsons Go To Birmingham.When I was in seventh grade I read the prequil to roll of Thunder called"the Land" and now that I have read Roll of Thunder I understand better what is going on with the family.
I thought this book was excellent and it helped me understand what black families went through.I liked the overall purpose of the book and the subject of it.The Logans are trying to get all their bills payed so that their land doesn't get taken away from them.It is uniquely written because the kids dont't know what is going on and how the white families treat black people out side of their town.You can deffinately tell that the don't know what prejudice people act like to them when they take the trip to Strawberry.

I loved to read this book. It was well written and tells a heartbreaking story. The innocents of a black young girl who doesn't understand why she is treated so different then the white kids. I almost felt sorry it had to be explainded to her. I wish we didn't have to tell our chideren that there is a difference between black and white.

THIS IS THE GREATEST BOOK I EVER READ!!!!!! I Would recomend this to anyone with good taste it has a lot of detail and meaning I give it a 5 cause of the great storyline

Power to Hurt is a very good book that might have been made even better with a little editing. At times it reads like an earnest slice-of-life novel, the type that asks the reader to spend a little more time than necessary inside the heroine's head. But she is, indeed, a heroine, and the book is quite moving at the end -- something that can't be said about many true crime stories.

The book only takes us up to the midpoint of the judge's career. It ends with the full Sixth Circuit hearing the case "en banc." Soon afterward, in a bizarre ruling, a majority of the court's members held that a judge's sexual assaults (some committed while he was literally wearing his black robe) did not constitute a civil rights violation because the US Supreme Court had never explicitly ruled that they did. That type of reasoning, needless to say, never stopped them or any other federal court from finding a civil rights violation when a cop or prison guard assaulted someone, but judges, you see, are different because, well, because the Sixth Circuit is composed of them.

The US Supreme Court reversed -- unanimously -- and sent the case back to the Sixth Circuit with instructions for it to get real. But then Judge Lanier, who'd been out on bond all this time, skipped off to San Diego where he lived under an assumed name. He eventually slipped over the border into Mexico. The Sixth Circuit ordered him to turn himself in and when he failed to do so, it dismissed his appeal, finding that by showing disrespect for the court he had forfeited his right to ask it for assistance. Just a day or two after the dismissal, the judge was arrested in Mexico and brought back to the States. (Was the timing coincidental?) To the end he had his supporters on the Sixth Circuit -- incidentally a spectacularly dysfunctional institution, with judges who aren't reluctant to go public with their mutual loathing -- but he's safely locked away now.

I wasn't fond of the title, but as I read the back of the book and skimmed the first few pages I was hooked. I couldn't believe what these poor women went through. Lanier was so thoroughly evil and couldn't even realize it. To think that women would want what he did to them is rather typical of a lot of men I think. He acted on his sick fantasies and them held the women's children's welfare over them. What a beast. I hope he stays in prison forever and inmates give him a dose of his own medicine.

I'm an avid true crime reader and sometimes get jaded but this book really grabbed me and took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. It's hard to believe that one person would be allowed to hold the power that Lanier did and hard to believe that a high court would release him the way they did. I have complete admiration for the women who stood up to this disgusting piece of "humanity", their courage is a model for all women!

In this book the Logan children experience a lot of things that get them ready for the real world. At the beginning, life is going pretty well. Life changes when Cassie's big brother, Stacey buys a new car that is very nice for an African American. It all starts in Strawberry when some white boys are making fun of Moe. They say things that really make him mad. He explodes and hits them with a crow bar. He then jumps into a truck that belongs to Jeremy Simms, a long time friend of the Logans. Jeremy is related to the people Moe just beat up. Being the good friend, Jeremy jumps in the truck and drives off. The Logans take off and pick up Moe in another town so they can take him to Memphis so he can catch a train to Chicago. On their way to Memphis they run into a lot of trouble with white people and they have a lot of car trouble. When the get near Memphis, Clarence gets really sick and has to go to an old lady's house to get better. The Logans finally get to Memphis and they get their car fixed so they can make it home. They finally get Moe on a train ticket. When he is getting ready to leave he expresses his love for Cassie. She is very disappointed because she knows she might not ever see him again. The ending of the book amazed me so to find out you need to read it.

I really enjoyed this book because it showed what black people had to put up with everyday. Also because it taught a very good lesson which was that even if things go bad they can turn out well.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is the first book of this series.
Let the Circle Be Unbroken is the second book in this series.

I read this book in one day!! I read "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry" in 8th grade as a class requirment and I loved it and I started looking for the sequals and prequals a couple of weeks ago. So far I like this one the best. Cassie Logan is 17 and still has a temper when it comes to segragation and one of the young white boys Jeremy Simms cousin Statler is setting eyes on young and beautiful Cassie Logan. an incident happens causing the Moe to flee to Memphis with the help of Cassie, Stacie, Clarence, Little Willie, and Jeremy Simms. On the way Cassie meets a very handsome man in a cafe........... Great book I highly reccomend you read it or get it for your child. Taylor is very good in expressing the hardships of the African American people during that time period.

I love The Road To Memphis. I started reading Mildred D. Taylor's book at the beginning last year at school as a class reading but right away I loved it by the time my teacher stared I was at the end of chapter 1 in Roll of Thunder,Hear My Cry. After that I couldn't stop reading, and I got in trouble for reading it so quickly, but then I read Let the Circle be Unbroken, then found myself reading The Road To Memphis. The main charcters of this book is Cassie,Stacey,Moe,Claudia,Little man,Christopher-John. When Moe gets tired of the whites treating him like dirt,he beats up 3 white boys,almost killing them. Then has to make a run for a train in Memphis to get to Stacey's uncle Hammer, But on the way somebody dies (i'm not saying who).In the end even a white's life messes up.Before I read this book I knew slaves had a hard time, but after slavery I didn't know how they were treated, and I think all whites (including me) are well respected of blacks even without reading theese books.! And I recomend you reading her other books to!

Being a Memphian myself, I was anxious to read the latest work of our newest local author, Brian Pera. Pera gives a new look to both Memphis fiction and the gay genre of literature. Earl, the narrator and main character, is one who the reader will quickly become absorbed in. His constant conflicts in life and his facination with a boy named Red drive this novel all the way. It was a quick read that I could not put down. Finding a part of me within the pages, I could quickly relate to Earl and his inner struggles. His search for affection gives the novel its depth and foundation. Pera is a true artist with dialogue, and a master at creating an interesting character that gay fiction fans will not soon forget!

Once you get use to this story's nonlinear structure this first novel by Brian Pera flows right along, and is really quite original. What a screwed-up life Earl's lives, the retarded gay hustler in his early 20's who chases after this guy named "Red", another hustler who has AIDS. Earl doesn't know it's love he is feeling for Red, and is so naïve, he doesn't even know how to please the john's that he entertains at Madam's. What an engrossing story, its so sad, dark, and touching. You want to reach out and help Earl get past the drugs, johns, and awful life he's living. WHAT a book to become absorbed in. The author really makes you feel for Earl. The books seems too short and makes you wish it was longer. It's hard to stop reading and put this book down; forget the chores and errands. This is a story that will be on your mind long after reading it. My highest recommendation, really enjoyable.

An engrossing tale that tangles the reader right into its non-linear perspective, Troublemaker is a great first novel. Earl's story is alternately sad and funny--but always touching--and his voice rings true from start to finish. The book's dark humor will appeal to those readers who appreciate literature's more subversive side. One of the most enjoyable pieces of contemporary fiction--gay or otherwise--that I've read in a long time...

The storyline of this book is very good, as well as the writing style. (You'll find a discussion about the storyline in the other reviews, I believe.) The 3 stars comes from the fact that I could barely finish reading it.

I am not usually a picky reader, but when I read this book, I could barely overlook the glaring editing errors: the poorly designed paragraphs, in which two people would talk without any note, even, of which one said what; the frequently missing quotes; etc. Three-fourths of the way into the book, I had to consciously keep myself from snatching up a red pen and just going through it all like some crazed school teacher...

As a first book, the book was extremely good, though. The characters were well-defined and sympathetic, the plot good, the ending somewhat open-ended--I'm assuming for a sequel, perhaps.

The story itself, ignoring the errors, would be at least 4 stars, so if you're not someone like me, who gets irritated by glaring editing problems, then I urge you to pick it up and read it.

When I bought the book, I was bored and needed something to do. I am glad that I read it. A previous person who reviewed the book said that there were a lot of typing errors and that is correct but the storyline is exciting. It is your typical storyline, bad guy meets good girl, tries to make good girl turn bad but has trouble getting what he wants when the good guy enters the picture. The only thing that I really did not like was the introductions to a whole lot of characters. It was kind of hard to follow at first but when I start something, I always finish it and I am glad that I did.

I would recommend this book.

This is a must read for the Vampire fan. This macabre of blood sucking savagness will lead you through the past to a believeable origin of Dracula!

Great book -- the lessons taught are for all service based organizations. Learn how to create customer loyalty and enjoy your business more. Must read!!

I have read other books by Robert L. Shook, and he is an accomplished writer of business books. He's at his best with Jackpot. This book is both informative and entertaining. Shook takes his reader behind the scenes at Harrah's, a gaming company with 26 casinos and reveals how the company is able to compete so successfully against billion-dollar properties in the Las Vegas market. Harrah's secret, as the subtitle states is how it wins customer loyalty and does it better than its competition. This is an excellent book for any business reader engaged in a highly competitive industry, and, in particular, goes head to head with the big boys. Shook's writing style is superb--he interwines anecdotal material that makes for a fascnating read. True, this is a business book, but at times, it's such a page-turner, you feel you're reading a novel.

This book is about an outstanding culture that is culminated from the founder's passion, integrity and leadership.

Jackpot provides cutting-edge lessons and ideas that are being exposed for the first time in topics such as: marketing and customer loyalty, building market share, and preserving high integrity.

Harrah's placed its chips on integrity and serving the customer. It's no wonder they are so successful.

"Cassina Gambrel Was Missing" is a uniquely told, fresh vision of one man's experience of a sometimes mythical modern South. It's a short novel, but in the space of a relative few pages, author William Watkins manages to pack more than a few punches about friendship, the drag that the past exerts on the present, and what happens to people as they move from their salad days to the more serious and cynical territory called "approaching forty."

There are too many twists in the narrative to give an accurate plot outline without being a "spoiler". Briefly, though, it's about a young conservative student named Jackson Taylor who by chance meets an older black woman named Cassina Gambrel. Cassina is one of those eye-opening kind of women in that she's got a unique perspective on every event and doesn't hesitate to tell Jackson what it is. Those events range from the serious: a harrowing strike by police and firemen that threaten to cripple a city; to the ribald: young Jackson's loss of his virginity on a memorably mosquito-ridden night. Jackson's college roomate, an artist named Braden O'Brien, is also integral to the story and it's in the revealing of the complex nature of this relationship that William Watkins presents himself as a writer of keen insight and skill.

I particularly enjoyed this author's ability to capture and reveal characters within a few sentences. I felt that I knew the minor characters very quickly and was always intrigued enough by the more complex nature of the major characters as their true natures are slowly revealed to keep turning the pages long after I should have turned off the lights and gone to sleep.

I was reminded of another Southern author, Peter Taylor and his masterpiece, "A Summons to Memphis," when I read "Cassina Gambrel Was Missing." Yes, the stories are both set in Memphis, Tennessee, but William Watkins also displays Taylor's fine aptitude for subtlety, especially when it comes to the more treacherous aspects of the highly nuanced relationship between the two young men in the novel.

I should mention also that this story does a dance through time. Some years after the characters have left college, Taylor gets a call from O'Brien informing him that their old friend Cassina is missing. This is when the novel really moves to a different level altogether. What had been a generally light, often side-splittingly funny tale of innocence lost, becomes a darker story of relationships rent asunder. Watkins handles all this deftly with at least two scenes occuring in the same venue but years apart presented back to back. The deja vu feeling that Jackson Taylor is experiencing is understandable and right on the money in its telling. How many of us have returned to a place and people that meant so much to us and have lost for a moment the sense of whether we're in the present or the past? This was beautifully handled in a cinematic style and adds a layer of poignancy to what is ultimately a very sad story that is also reminiscent in its own way of "The Great Gatsby."

I recommend this book to any reader looking for a story that will stay with them long after they've finished reading it. The more you think about this one, the better it gets.

They used to call books like CASSINA GAMBREL WAS MISSING "picaresque." Now, we might call them "cinematic." I am a film buff, and when I first read this extraordinary novel I thought surely the author must be Italian. He thinks like the great filmakers of Italy, the Rosselinis and Fellinis. He unfolds his narrative in the manner of the masters. Scenes shift from the poignant to the grotesque to the comic to the vulgar with the payoff being a first rate portrait of an era and its effects on a man. Surely the city-character of Memphis that William Watkins paints here is the literary equivalent of the Rome of Rosselini's, ROME - OPEN CITY.

What a profound achievement this book is! I am deeply impressed and eagerly await the next work of this highly promising author.

I am a 16 yearold girl who just happened to stumble upon a book for a research project that is absolutely different. This was a very understandable book. I could see everything happening as if I was involved. I love the way it was wrote and one thing I picked up on was the affect betrayal can have on someone. The narrator's father was betrayed by his bestfriend and financial partner. He was so distraught that he removed his family from their home and moved to Memphis. The father completely controlled his family and their own lives. He was afraid that he would fall apart if his children left him(by marriage). He foiled all their plans to marry and ruined their lives forever. What goes around comes around because when he planned to remarry, two years after his wife's death, his children foiled his plans. He learned a big lesson the hard way and the worst part is that it took him his whole life to realize what he did. This is a really great book that takes you into a past that is unbelievab

Peter Taylor writes in a way that makes every moment enjoyable and worth remembering. The story of the lives of the members of the Carver family and the profound effect a move from Nashville to Memphis has on them is unforgettable. By the novel's end the reader is left with so much to consider, from the relationships of the characters to their motivations and eventual lifestyles. And unlike one of the last books I read, Philip Roth's American Pastoral, which also chronicled the life of an American family, Taylor's book is beautifully written but yet simple and clear - no egotistical self-loving prose here! I would actually plan on reading some of Taylor's other works, this was so enjoyable. You won't forget this one.

Not quite Southern Gothic but still eerie and unsettling, this winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and Ritz-Paris Hemingway award is beautifully and hauntingly written. The narrator, an intellectual, rare books dealer, lives a comfortable but sterile existence with an equally passionless younger Jewish woman in New York City. His colorless routine is interrupted when his spinster middle aged sisters ask him to come to Memphis to assist them in preventing their father from remarrying. Although he is initially reluctant to interfere with his elderly father's life and last chance for marital happiness, he finds his return to Memphis and his family's past inexorable. Although I come from a Southern family and attended college with the children of prominent Tennessee families at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, I still had a difficult time understanding the characters and their motives. Characters such as these, like the Old South, do not exist anymore. The patriarchal, stern father, a former Vanderbilt football hero uproots his family when the narrator is a teenager from Nashville to Memphis when the father is ruined financially and betrayed by his best friend. This move permanently damages each member of the family in some way. The father then thwarts any attempt his children make to marry and start families of their own. When he decides in his eighties to marry again, it's his children's turn to sabotage his marriage plans. The older sisters, although they are economic and social powers in Memphis, are eccentric to the point of buffoonery. They possess dowdy, middle aged figures but dress in revealing, girlish outfits a la Baby Jane and pay young men to be their escorts. The mother, like a delicate magnolia tree that has been transplanted unsuccessfully, becomes an invalid after the move to Memphis. She slowly withers and dies. An older brother runs off to join the army and is killed in combat; the narrator is convinced that he did so as a form of suicide. The narrator escapes to New York, but lives an emotionless life, surrounded by dusty antique books and cheap and ugly furniture. The family dynamics are fascinating, as are the insights into the rigid standards and canons of the Southern gentry class that imprison the family. This is a wonderful period piece that captures the civilization that has been all but wiped out by the New South.

Faulkner's novel The Reivers is in my opinion his best work. Unlike many of Faulkner's stories The Reiver's comedic and lighthearted and at the same time it tackles and touches on many of the dark and not so comedic sectors of human nature. The novel is viewed through the lens of a young man named Lucius priest. Lucius accompanies his on an unsanctioned trip to Memphis with two of his fathers employees Boon Hoggenbeck and Ned McCaslin. Putting it lightly Lucius' traveling companions are, "men of the world" that is they protray a great deal of flaws and weaknesses that permiate humanity. They drink, smoke, gamble, steal, and womanize..... As Faulkner puts it they are, "practitioners of non-virtue". As the trip progresses Lucius soon realizes that he too has began down the path of non-virtue. As I said earlier Lucius and party are travelling to Memphis, but in The Reivers it is not the destination that is important to the story it is how they get their. Every leg of the journey find the characters with a new problem to tackle and a new display of what non-virtue is. As with many of his novels Faulkner takes the base human instincts good and bad and portrays them in a believable and poignant manner. The language used in the novels suits its characters and time perfectly and adds to the humor in some instances. The question you should ponder is does Lucius succumb to the non-virtue he is surrounded by in his travels? Read it and find out.

Have you ever read a novel or a short story and felt an urgency to finish it but also an urgency to never finish? That's how I felt while reading Faulkner's The Reivers. This Pulitzer prize novel concerns one eleven-year-old white boy named Lucius Priest. Through the mediation of his father's underlings--Boon Hoggenbeck and Ned McCaslin--Lucius comes of age in the art of non-virtue. While Lucius's grandfather is away, the three of them "borrow" the old man's automobile and embark on a bumpy journey to Memphis. On the trip, Lucius sees it all--whoredom, lust, theft, profanity, gambling--and struggles with these things in the context of a southern religious tradition. Though he has every opportunity to turn back and forgo the trip, he presses on and convinces himself that it's all too late. Non-virtue has already embraced him. On the other hand, Boon and Ned have no doubts of their lack of virtue, and when they see Lucius drinking from evil's muddy waters, they just nod their heads (don't think that the story is grim, for it's down right funny at times). The story is addictive, even though the language is rocky and convoluted at times. Faulker was no Raymond Carver or Ernest Hemingway; conversely, he was the ultimate practitioner of the compound-complex sentence. The dialogue was so real, especially with Ned and other black folks. I felt as though I were standing around the campfire chewing tobacco and thumbing my suspenders and talking about horse racing. No wonder this novel hooked the Pulitzer. It's quality stuff.

I remember reading Faulkner's Sound and the Fury as a college sophmore and swearing never to read another book by him again. I happened to find the Reivers in my local library and decided to give his Pulitzer Prize winning book a try. It is a charming book that tells the story of a stolen car, a stolen horse, a horse race, and the life changing experiences of an 11 year old boy in the course of a week. Although Faulkner employs colons and semicolons more than any writer, and his sentences seem to continue on indefinitely, the effort of adjusting to his style rewards the reader with a wonderful tale. I highly reccomend this book, and hope to try another Faulkner book in the near future. Maybe I will even attempt the Sound and the Fury someday.