Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands [Paperback]

Susan Carol McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Here is one of those rare and remarkable debuts that herald the appearance of a major new talent on the literary scene. Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage.

To this day, my family is in disagreement as to precisely when the nightmare began. For me, it was the morning Daddy and Luther discovered Marvin, beaten, shot, and dying, in the Klan’s stomping grounds off Round Lake Road. My brother Ren disagrees. He points to the small cluster of scars that begin just outside his left eye and trail horizontally across his temple to the top of his ear. Ren claims it started when the men in white robes took the unprecedented step of shooting at two white children. Others say it was when Mr. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP and Mr. Hoover’s FBI came to town. Mother and Daddy shake their heads. In their minds, the real beginning was much earlier....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the turbulent spring of 1951, central Florida became notoriously linked to a vicious series of Ku Klux Klan activities. The racial, religious, and political mix that populated Reesa McMahon's childhood hometown of Mayflower that same year was, as her Northern-born father remarked, "the social equivalent of a Molotov cocktail." The upheaval her family experiences in the coming-of-age novel Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy--which is based on actual events from her own life--abruptly ends Reesa's girlish sense of security. When her friend Marvin Cully, a black orange-picker who works for her father, is killed by the local Opalakee Klan, she realizes how much her liberal family stands out in opposition to the men with white sheets and guns who, unmasked, served as the pillars of the local community. While making sense of Marvin's death and slowly realizing the extent to which her fellow townsfolk brandish their racist attitudes, Reesa watches her own house become the unofficial center of the resistance. The author notes her arguably sensible reasons for fictionalizing her accounts, but the resulting story doesn't move beyond the confines of a young girl's mind. --Emily Russin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Basing her first novel on real events in central Florida in 1951, McCarthy offers an evocative if overly familiar picture of the racist South at the start of the civil rights movement. She tells her story through the eyes of 12-year-old Reesa McMahon, whose transplanted Yankee parents are relative newcomers in the small community of Mayflower. The local Opalakee Klan terrorizes and murders young black citrus picker Marvin Cully, who works for the McMahons' growing and shipping company. Aware that the local police are corrupt Klan members, Reesa's father decides to contact the FBI. Soon, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall is called in to the case, and barely escapes with his life when the Klan attempts to abduct him. Bombings of black housing projects and Jewish congregations occur in other parts of Florida. When the leader of Florida's NAACP and his wife are murdered in Miami, there are indications that the Opalakee Klan is involved. Because he decides to cooperate with the FBI investigation, Reesa's father puts the family into danger. Reesa is an engaging narrator, obsessed with the murder of her friend Marvin, slowly becoming aware of the virulent hatred and bigotry that coexists with their neighbors' generosity, good manners and Baptist spiritual fervor. As McCarthy establishes the domestic and social routines of an inbred community, she also takes pains to render Reesa as an impressionable preadolescent, though she credits her with insights beyond her age. Still, the sincerity of her tale and its simple telling would make the book as interesting to young adult readers as it will be to those who remember or want to learn about the tangled moral questions of the '50s. Agent, Lane Zachary. (Feb.)sealed for 40 years.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553381032
• ISBN-13: 978-0553381030
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Carol McCarthy was born and raised in the rural grovelands of pre-Disney central Florida. After graduating University of South Florida, however, McCarthy wrote advertising for then-opened Walt Disney World in Orlando. Later, after successful stints at McCann Erickson Advertising in Atlanta and San Francisco, McCarthy married a Californian and settled in San Diego as a full-time freelancer.

In 1991, McCarthy's writing life took a dramatic turn. A batch of news clippings from the Orlando Sentinel and a startling letter from her father detailed a series of shocking race crimes that occurred throughout Florida in 1951-1952. (Records of an FBI investigation, a Grand Jury hearing, and KKK indictments had been sealed for 40 years.) Her father's account of his daring cooperation with the FBI became the basis for McCarthy's award-winning debut novel, LAY THAT TRUMPET IN OUR HANDS.

Her second novel, TRUE FIRES, was inspired by true events that occurred in Lake County, Florida in 1954. Kirkus Reviews called the book "a vivid portrait of mid-century corruption and of some brave enough to risk everything for justice."

Her third novel, called PERILOUS, will be published next year and is set in Orlando during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

In a recent interview, McCarthy explained, "I'm drawn to the stories of ordinary people who, when backed into a moral corner, choose, often at great risk, to do the right thing. Where do they get such extraordinary courage? How do they achieve that level of grace?"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement, July 22, 2002

By 

Elaine S. Reitz (Coralville, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands (Hardcover)

This novel is a glimpse into the world of 12-year-old Reesa and her family, a Northern family living in Central Florida during the early '50s.
Based on actual events, the story covers some of the atrocities committed by the KKK in Florida in 1951, beginning with the brutal slaying of Marvin, a dear friend of Reesa's family, who is African-American, and who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Marvin's slaying is only the first in a string of violent events that include bombings in Miami, and the murder of the Moores, a couple who worked to bring the vote to Florida's African-American population.
Determined to bring Marvin's murderers to justice, Reesa's family sets off a string of events that eventually lead to a federal investigation and federal trial of many of the town's KKK members.
Why don't they teach this in school? I had no idea of any of these events until I read this novel. How very sad.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, April 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (Paperback)

WOW! What a read! This is an important story told beautifully. Some of the narrative is lyrical. Other parts will chill you to the bone. It is a story that will stick with me for a long, long time. Told from the point of view of a young girl in 1951 Florida, it takes the reader into the civil rights movement with heartbreaking intimacy. Compared, on the cover, to To Kill a Mockingbird (something that's almost inevitable when the story deals with a pre-pubescent narrator talking about racism in the South), I found it a "different bird" altogether. It stands on its own as a fine piece of literature. Book discussion groups, take note! And all others simply looking for a book that will provoke thought and feeling - look no further.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing story of faith, family and the Civil Rights movement, May 3, 2005

By 

jeanne-scott (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (Paperback)

Susan Carol McCarthy tells an amazing story of family, friendship and personal strength through the eyes of a young girl, Reesa, living in central Florida in the 1950's.

Two families become entwined when the KKK intimidates, stalks and randomly murders a young man, Marvin Cully, because he is black. The young man's death is a turning point for Reesa McMahon because the ugly world of racism is unveiled before her young eyes. Marvin Cully's family and Reesa's families are friends, and Marvin's death draws them even closer. Reesa's parents must make decisions to do what is right, even at the risk of endangering their own family.

The early Civil Rights movement is explored, with the founder Harry T. Moore joining the McMahon's and the Cully's in trying to expose and bring to justice those responsible for Marvin's murder. This opens the window on the KKK and more violence and terror is unleashed.

This is a story that is both beautiful and heart-wrenching. It is a story about friends, faith and families that make definitive choices to do the right thing. It is also about innocence lost when wrong and right collide, leaving moral courage stamped in fire upon a young girl's soul.

I met the author at a book event in Tampa. She spoke about the historical accuracy of her book and told of her decision to write this book based on her father's actions in that time. Also at this event was Evangeline Moore, the daughter of Harry Moore, and she told of her view of events of the time and of her parents violent murder.

This is an amazing book that is an honest and insightful view into the thoughts and lives of those in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement and a foresight of changes that were to come.