For as long as anyone in the small town of Linville, Mississippi, can remember, the big black man called "Dummy," Jubal Jefferson, has pulled his mother's laundry wagon around town. They have long whispered about his father's disappearance after murdering a man in the lean times following the flood of 1927. Still, most people don't remember his real name or know much about him--or care. For as long as anybody can remember, the Dunaway family has been one of hard-working, decent people. Though neither wealthy nor poor, they are respected and liked by everybody in town. The children, Lucas and Sarah, are well behaved. They are a perfect white family in a town sharply divided along racial lines. But appearances can be deceiving, and lines are meant to be crossed.

Fate wraps the Dunaways in its ambivalence, nearly destroying the family's good fortune and name while pulling the children closer to Jubal. A fire engulfs the family's home, but Jubal's act of heroism to save the children comes into question when the mother is found dead. Jubal Jefferson is forced to face his greatest fear--being accused of murder. Part elegy to small-town childhood, full of suspense, and written with a sensitivity and attention to detail that reveals the complexity of how we see and treat those who are different, this gripping first novel holds echoes of classic works of Southern fiction, such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Gary Penley is a self-taught writer and retired petroleum geologist. His first book, Rivers of Wind, is a memoir of his boyhood with his grandfather on a Colorado ranch. His second book (his first published by Pelican) is the true story of one woman's great triumph against a system that sought to imprison her for life, Della Raye: A Girl Who Grew Up in Hell and Emerged Whole. Mr.

Penley lives in Divide, Colorado, with his wife, Karen.