The Twelve-Mile Straight : 4th Estate : 9780008158682 : 0008158681 : 11 Jan 2018 : 'Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent' Ann Patchett'A superb novel whose roots can be traced to Harper Lee and Carson McCullers' Oprah MagazineGenus Jackson was killed in Cotton County, Georgia, on a summer midnight in 1930, when the newborn twins were fast asleep. They lay head to toe in a cradle meant for one, Winnafred on one side and Wilson on the other. Only if you looked closely - and people did - could you see that the girl was pink as a piglet, and the boy was brown. In a house full of secrets, two babies - one light-skinned, the other dark - are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper's daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged down the Twelve-Mile Straight, the road to the nearby town.