An intimate family drama extends to the sweep of the American epic fiction of Harper Lee, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner in this return from the author of 'Ten Thousand Saints'. A white sharecropper's daughter in thirties Georgia gives birth to two babies, one light-skinned and one dark, setting in motion a destabilising series of confrontations.

In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight. Combining the intimacy of a family drama with the grandeur of an American epic, The Twelve-Mile Straight is tender and savage, heart-breaking and hopeful, and deeply human.