The Rock Cried Out

by Ellen Douglas

It is the beginning of 1971 and Alan McLaurin, at twenty-two a young idealist and aspiring poet, dreaming of solitude and longing for the wintry smell of cedar and pine he knew growing up in rural Mississippi, has left Boston behind to return to what remains of his family's ancestral homeplace in Chickasaw Ridge. He finds the small closed community still haunted by memories of 1964, when civil rights activists fought for integration while the Ku Klux Klan roamed the back roads. It was during that summer that a local black church was destroyed by arsonists and that Alan's beloved cousin Phoebe was killed in a mysterious car crash along with the wife of his black friend Sam Daniels. As he begins to uncover the history behind that senseless tragedy, and as the people involved reveal their unsuspected role in it, Alan must confront his region's violent history and his own buried demons.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

303 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Ellen Douglas is the pseudonym for Josephine Haxton, whose family roots extend back to the earliest settlements in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Her fiction has won many prizes, including the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, the Hillsdale Prize for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award.

Reviews

[Cphe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Secrets upon secrets upon secrets in the Deep South. Well written novel but slow moving. Deals with grief and viewing past events from different perspectives.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story of Alan, a young southern writer who returns to his family home in Mississippi intent on doing up the house, but ends up revisiting the time of an accident which took the life of his cousin and which he has never managed to get out of his system. Mostly set in 1971, it also looks back at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was really beginning to make its impact felt in this small town community. I was not aware of Ellen Douglas before reading this but will be looking out for more of her novels and stories.

[Philippa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was really interesting, and I don't understand why it's not better known. A vivid portrayal of Mississippi 50 years ago. No plot to speak of, just a strong sense of the place and the people.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A southern boy who moved north comes back south to live on his family land. He begins to learn secrets that were kept from him about his family. He begins to have flash backs. It is an intense book, the title being from a gospel song. A black church is bombed and he was there but the memory had been lost for years. This book seared through me when I read it and I recommend it.

[Gayle Alston · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very powerful book