Crossing Bully Creek
Margaret Erhart

Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize
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"On the sickbed there was no difference between man and woman, white and colored, rich and poor,” Rutha Brown observes at the beginning of this richly nuanced novel about the dawning of the Civil Rights Era in the rural South. Henry Detroit, the owner of Longbrow—one of Georgia’s great plantations—is slipping from this world as the 1960s draw to a close. Around him swirls a cast of eclectic characters whose stories are intimately bound to the land. From the searing wit of his wife, Rowena (a descendant of William Tecumseh Sherman), to the strong opinions of his granddaughter, Frankie; from the steady forbearance of the groundskeeper, Lewis, to the visionary declarations of young Roosevelt, the narrative captures the moment when the burdens of oppression and tradition yield to a more complex, hope-filled South.

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Praise for Crossing Bully Creek
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“Erhart’s descriptions of her characters are reminiscent of Jane Austen’s in their devastating precision.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review

“A well-crafted, compelling portrait of the Deep South from the Depression to the Vietnam era.”
- Booklist

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