Set in 1931’s Jim Crow South, Feldman’s dramatization of the infamous Scottsboro case makes for bleak, if familiar, reading. Alice Whittier, an ambitious, crusading journalist at the left-wing New York City publication The New Order
, covers the arrest of nine young African-American men in Scottsboro, Ala., for the alleged rapes of two white prostitutes. Four days later, the Alabama courts have tried and sentenced eight to die. With a keen sense of drama, Feldman follows the story as worldwide indignation grows, and the case bogs down in appeals and retrials before an eventual hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court. Through it all, Alice, the only woman journalist on the story, reports the events in gruesome detail, conducts her trust-funded life and quiets some rattling family skeletons. She emerges as a satisfyingly fleshed-out character, as does syphilitic, guilt-ridden accuser Ruby Bates. But the best thing about the novel is the detailed, matter-of-fact way in which it recreates Alice and Ruby’s milieus—both of which are removed, in very different ways, from the world of the accused. What emerges is a raw sense of alienation and collision, with the novel’s true protagonists mostly offscreen. (Apr.)
