Steve Oney was educated at the University of Georgia and at Harvard, where he was a Nieman Fellow. He worked for many years as a staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine. He has also contributed articles to many national publications, including Esquire, Playboy, Premiere, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. His stories have been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, 2006 and The Best American Magazine Writing, 2008. Oney lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Madeline Stuart.

"Brilliant. . . . Ninety years later, the tale of murder and revenge in Georgia still has the power to fascinate. . . . Intense, suspenseful." -The Washington Post Book World

"A major achievement . . . A fine work of history." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Compelling and relentlessly preoccupying. . . . Oney dapples his volume with vibrant, multihued street scenes and thumbnail portraits. You can almost hear the squealing brakes and clanging bells of the trolley cars outside the courtroom." -The Houston Chronicle

"Invites comparison to Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song. The book packs a wallop at many levels, from the mythic Southern characters to the violent infrastructure of our cultural memory." -The New York Times

"A grim and teeming ghost story. . . . A monumental folk parable of innocent suffering and a blind, brutal urge for retribution that passes finally into the simple, stark awe and pity of tragedy." -The New York Review of Books

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Pub date: 2004-10-12

Length: 784 pages