Vanity Fair Author David Rose May 7, 2007

At A Cappella Books, author David Rose retells a dark tale of injustice in the south that isn’t a vestige of the Jim Crow past, but is happening now.

Ten years in the making by Vanity Fair’s acclaimed David Rose, The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice masterfully recounts the torrid history of racial injustice in small-town Georgia, beginning with lynchings during Reconstruction, continuing through a Civil Rights-era political murder cover-up, and culminating in the unjust trial at the heart of the book –the rape and murder of seven elderly women, almost all members of the elite, all-white Big Eddy Club, in a notorious set of crimes known as the “stocking stranglings.”

Ross will read from The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice, and sign copies of the book at A Cappella Books in Little Five Points on Monday, May 7 at 7:00 PM.

Over the course of eight bloody months in the 1970s, a serial rapist and murderer terrorized Columbus, Georgia, killing seven elderly white women by strangling them in their beds. In 1986, eight years after the last murder, an African American, Carlton Gary, was convicted and sentenced to death. Though many in the city doubt his guilt, he remains on death row.

The case was officially resolved with the 1986 conviction of an African American man, Carlton Gary, who was sentenced to death for the crimes. Since then a number of legal, medical and criminal experts have openly disputed the case’s handling and conclusion, but not until now has the full story been told. Gary’s life still hangs in the balance and a retrial on the basis of new evidence could begin any day.

Framed by the tale of two lynchings—one carried out illegally at the start of the twentieth century, and the other a legal lynching carried out at the century's end—The Big Eddy Club is a gripping, revealing drama, full of evocatively drawn characters, insidious institutions, and the extraordinary connections that bind past and present. The book is also a compelling, accessible, and timely exploration of race and criminal justice, not just in the context of the South but in the entire United States, as it addresses the corruption of due process as a tool of racial oppression.

Rose is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has worked for The Guardian, The Observer, and BBC. He is the author of five previous books, including Guantánamo (The New Press), and lives in Oxford, England.

Official Website: http://www.acappellabooks.com/schedule.htm