Bloodroot

A young black boy’s death shines a spotlight on the Civil Rights-era South in this subtle, gripping racial drama. It’s a tragedy when little Eddie Shaver, an African-American orphan, drowns trying to retrieve a fishing lure; but the fact that his white foster father, Hurley Cutshaw, stood idly by watching him die, and may have ordered him into the water, could make it a crime.

So thinks Harry Weatherholtz, the retired sheriff who pulled Eddie’s body from the lake. Harry’s pursuit of justice quickly runs up against the strictures of white supremacy and the judicial corruption that feeds off them.

A hardened ex-lawman, Harry has always used his size and toughness to dominate other men. But he’s also a devout Christian. He realizes that his bullheadedness is part of the problem, and that, much as it galls him, conciliatory overtures may be the only way to deal with the racist Cutshaw and his thuggish associates.

Through Harry’s story, Larry Arrowood paints a nuanced portrait of Southern culture as it begins, slowly and painfully, to shake off the fetters of hate. Bloodroot is the first book of The Shenandoah Series.