Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America [Hardcover]

Sharon Davies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0195379799 | ISBN-13: 978-0195379792

It was among the most notorious criminal cases of its day. On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive? The priest had married Stephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.

Sharon Davies's Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson's crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and "foreigners" as well. In one of the case's most unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson's defense. Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black.

Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow.

"Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page."
--Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice

"This gripping history...has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. Drama aside, Rising Road also happens to be a fine work of history."
--History News Network

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is a reverse whodunit: we know who committed the crime but not—though we can guess—whether he'll be convicted. Since it takes place in 1921 Birmingham, Ala., the story's likely to involve race, gender relations, family authority, and religion, and not to be pretty. Davies, a professor of law at Ohio State, knows her way through the thickets of criminal proceedings and the ways of adversarial attorneys. She also mines trial transcripts for all they're worth. One of the defense lawyers is none other than Hugo Black, later a Supreme Court Justice but here a supporter of the Klan, which he would soon join. When all is over, the murderer, a white Protestant, goes free after killing a Catholic priest and expressing, like most in the courtroom, just about every vulgar prejudice of the day. Davies leaves almost no detail unmentioned, when a novelist's way of letting one fact stand in for many others would have made the story move more quickly. But this is an illustrative tale about its time, well worth the telling. 15 b& photos. (Feb.)
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Review

"A wonderful reconstruction of an illuminating piece of American legal history. It should appeal not only to scholars of race, gender, and religion in the Jim Crow south but also to anyone who enjoys a dramatic legal yarn." --The Journal of Southern History

"First-rate history. Detailed yet fast-paced, it lays bare the common, deep-rooted bigotry of a region and era that made the jury verdict predictable. Davies' fascinating book is an excellent work of narrative history. Rising Road deserves a wide audience."--Columbus Dispatch

"An illustrative tale about its time, well worth the telling."--Publishers Weekly

"Gripping...a fine work of history [with] notable economy, clarity, and quality research."--Jim Cullen, History News Network

"In this exquisite book, Sharon Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page."--Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age

"A deep knowledge of Southern and legal history, and of the dramatic give-and-take of criminal trials, allows this compelling human story of religion, race and murder to show how the barbarities of 1920s Alabama had played out in families, courts and politics."--David Roediger, Professor of History at University of Illinois and author of How Race Survived U.S. History

"Sharon Davies skillfully traces how an open-and-shut case unraveled. That the outcome seemed foreordained did not inhibit Davies from writing a gripping trial history." - Christian Century

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195379799
• ISBN-13: 978-0195379792
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #519,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary and Moving Tale, January 14, 2010

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Middle-aged Professor (NY'er living in Ohio) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America (Hardcover)

Rising Road takes one of the first "trials of the century," the murder of a catholic priest in 1920's Birmingham, Alabama, and brings it vividly to life. Like the best works in this nonfiction genre, such as Arc of Justice or Seabiscuit, the author turns what must have been painstaking historical research into a page-turning narrative that places us in the United States of 100 years ago in fully realized detail. What is so wonderful about this book are the combination of a great story--love, race, religion, family conflict--with celebrity added in (future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black has a prominent part) together with fascinating social history and, to top it off, an "inside look" at a criminal case from the expert perspective of a law professor and former prosecutor. I learned a great deal from this book while enjoying it like a novel. Although there are very few living souls who can remember the events recounted in Rising Road (and one suspects Davies must have tracked them down and interviewed them), very few readers of this book will ever forget them. I know I wont. Highly recommended.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rising Road gives you a slice of time, February 18, 2010

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Note Taker (Sunderland, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America (Hardcover)

My first thought after reading Ms. Davies Rising Road was "I can't wait for her next book." As an academic librarian, with an interest in history, sociology, anthropology and politics, I have read many non-fiction works written for the academic scholar. What a pleasure it was to find myself reading a page-turner that was both informative and entertaining. I especially enjoyed it when Ms. Davies interjected witty editorial comments into the narration. They acted to draw the reader further in to become part of the story. Her courtroom descriptions are detailed enough to satisfy any attorney reading the book, but are clear enough to be understood by the layperson. I would certainly not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in legal studies, history, and woman's studies.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rising Road, January 13, 2010

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Plum W - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America (Hardcover)

This is a beautifully written book that captures your attention from the very first page. Although it's a true story it reads more like a novel, with the same sort of page-turning excitement as the story builds. I generally don't like non-fiction but this was a fascinating book. The author manages to convey the sense of time and place so well that I could see this as a movie in my mind.