When Janis Owens heard stories about the last lynching in Florida, she investigated the event for several years. After compiling enough info about what happened she put her skills as a master story teller to work and came up with a believable story about a young girl who grows up in northern Florida where people don't talk much about the town's dark history. Then along comes an anthropology student who under the guise of love begins to ferret out secrets that many want to remain hidden. What happens after he is shot and leaves northern Florida and the girl behind feeling lucky to be alive? Years later he has the opportunity to revisit both the town and the girl.

Loved reading this story and talking with the author about her research into this episode in our American past.

Kay ( )

In her fourth novel (after The Schooling of Claybird Catts), Owens takes on an ugly subject and largely succeeds with an engrossing story. Based on the last reported lynching in America, Owens relocates the history to a tiny Florida town, where, in 1938, Henry Kite, a black man, was lynched after shooting a Jewish storekeeper. Decades later, the storekeeper's great-grandson, Sam, a graduate student in anthropology, arrives to investigate the lynching. Things get complicated when he falls for Jolie, a Pentecostal preacher's daughter whose family are thought of as "inbred hillbillies." Summary BPL

Before I read American Ghost, I understood that the term "cracker" was inseparable from "Georgia". Turns out that there are Florida crackers too! Despite the backstory of the 1938 lynching of a black man who shot killed a white store owner, the novel details the 21st century incarnation of the people who perpetrated and celebrated the long ago torture and murder not only of the shooter, but his family as well. Ms Owen treads carefully: a credible romance between a Christian "cracker" and a Jewish intellectual from Miami lighten the thematic burden while serving as a modern day reveal for the rural community's violent xenophobia.

Ms Owens is compared to Marjorie Rawlins and Flannery O'Connor on the book's jacket. Inaccurate and misleading, in my opinion. Her style more closely resembles Ron Rash's and his Appalachia novels; both authors write with an intimate authority about their respective regions.

8 out of 10. Recommended to readers of contemporary fiction, American history and Florida history. ( )

I actually had to go and check with Wiki to find out what the cracker culture in Florida was all about. This was a very interesting, extremely well written and easy to read story. The character development was wonderful and this is one of the few books that I can say I liked almost every character. Inspired by a true event, a horrible lynching, relatively late in the 1930's, this book highlights the cracker culture of Southern Florida, their superstitions and strong family clans. Shows how much past events can affect the future and how everyone's views of the same event can differ. Loved reading the story of Joe and Sam and loved how Jolie talked and thought of her father. I highly recommend this book, it was a wonderful combination of history, family ties and mystery. ( )

Recommended by Greg Mortimer