Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction

Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction
by Melissa Fay Greene

Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction
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Book Summary Information

Author: Melissa Fay Greene
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-29
ISBN: 0306815176
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Da Capo Press

Book Reviews of Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction

Book Review: The Downside of Eden
Summary: 5 Stars

Coastal Georgia is a frequent destination for me. Whenever I have to be away from it, I am planning the next time I'll be able to smell the marsh, feel the sand in my shoes and hear the musical voices of the residents. I have been to Darien many, many times, but my first visit was in 1994, long after the initial events in this book took place. Reading PRAYING FOR SHEETROCK was educational, to say the least. What Melissa Fay Greene does in her narrative is show you the different Dariens - the black experience is (or was) far different from the one enjoyed by whites in this historic community.

It is said that there are two sides to every story; in SHEETROCK, there are significantly more than that to be found. McIntosh County is a prism, and the truth is refracted through every possible angle. Greene tries not to take sides. She offers as much of a journalistic approach as possible, starting with the early 1970s and the corruption in the local government, and ending with the changes in the life of Thurnell Alston, the man who, with others in his community, stood up to the status quo.

At times, Greene's writing approaches the poetic. Her use of language is nothing less than stunning. She evokes the true beauty of this part of the world, and reminds me, even in the bleak passages, why I love it so. Few other authors I've read have been so successful in bringing the environment to mind, even when describing the mosquitos and choking dust on a dry day. Almost anyone can write a beautiful sunset; it's a truly excellent writer who can narrate a lack of plumbing and make it interesting.

PRAYING FOR SHEETROCK may not prove to be interesting to everyone who reads it. Those who have ties to the McIntosh County will get the most out of it, I believe, and others may be bored. As someone who loves Coastal Georgia, and American history, I was fascinated.

Summary of Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction

Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable book, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, a small, isolated, and lovely place on the flowery coast of Georgia--and a county where, in the 1970s, the white sheriff still wielded all the power, controlling everything and everybody. Somehow the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement managed to bypass McIntosh entirely. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man, Thurnell Alston, to challenge the sheriff and his courthouse gang--and to change the way of life in this community forever. "An inspiring and absorbing account of the struggle for human dignity and racial equality" (Coretta Scott King)

Despite what it said in the New York Times or the Congressional Record, not everybody in America got the word right away about the civil rights movement. Thus it was that well into the 1970s, McIntosh County in backwoods Georgia remained a place where the black majority still had never elected one of their own to any county office, where black kids were bused away from the white school, and where the white county sheriff had his hand in every racket there was. Praying for Sheetrock is the saga of how, thanks to the leadership of a black shop-steward-turned-county-commissioner named Thurnell Alston, together with the aid of a cadre of idealistic Legal Services lawyers (Melissa Greene was one of their paralegals) this situation began to change. The story, written as grippingly as a novel, is charged with twists that only nonfiction can deliver; for example, Alston, for all the brave good he did, ultimately got caught in a federal sting and went to jail while the corrupt sheriff walked. This is, writes Greene, a story of "large and important things happening in a very little place."

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