Troublefield

by Susan Rivers

Told in a series of firsthand accounts, from the Governor on down to the sister of one of the linchpins in encouraging the murderers, Troublefield is based on a true story, the double-lynching of two black men that occurred just behind the police station in Blacksburg, SC in 1912. Tracing the tensions that rose in the town between the white millworkers and the rising number of African Americans, Rivers paints a portrait of a town deeply invested in racism and a narrative to justify their fears and hatred; and a woman on the cusp of understanding her complicity in it all. Her novel asks, like Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound, whether it’s possible to see outside of your own perspective when you live in a town and a time governed by racism.
 

288 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Susan Rivers began her writing career as a playwright, receiving the Julie Harris Playwriting Award and the New York Drama League Award, and working as an NEA Writer-in-Residence in San Francisco.

Her focus shifted to fiction with a move to the Carolinas in 1995. Rivers' debut novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday, was published by Algonquin Books in 2017. It was a People Magazine "Best New Books Pick" and a Woman's Day "Editor's Desk Pick" in 2017, as well as IndieNext, Library Reads and Winter OKRA Picks, and was a Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads 2018 Selection. The novel was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize 2017 and the Southern Book Prize 2018.

The author lives and writes in upstate South Carolina.