’Sippi by John Oliver Killens (1916–1987) takes place during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s. Killens, who is unfortunately not much read today, founded the Harlem Writers’ Group and taught many of the next generation of African American writers, including Piri Thomas, Ntozake Shange, Nicholasa Mohr, and Thulani Davis. (You might also try Killens’s Youngblood, which takes place in Georgia.)

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• Recommend another book set in Mississippi!

Billy by Albert French, set in 1937, is a stunning and painful novel about the execution of a ten-year-old boy who killed a white girl during a racial confrontation.

A lighthearted look at Mississippi (and there aren’t many) is James Kaplan’s Pearl’s Progress, about a New Yorker who takes a job at Picket State University and finds himself a fish out of water.

In Rosellen Brown’s Civil Wars, Jessie and Teddy Carll, who came South to participate in the civil rights movement, find their marriage challenged when they take on the responsibility of raising their orphaned niece and nephew, whose views on race sharply differ with their own.

Bev Marshall’s Right as Rain also explores the contradictions and paradoxes of race through a story about two black women and the white family they work for.

Other Mississippi novels include Frederick Barthelme’s Bob the Gambler; Greg Iles’ 24 Hours (and others); Willie Morris’ Taps, set during the Korean War; all the novels of Steve Yarbrough (including Visible Spirits, The Oxygen Man, and Veneer); and Elizabeth Spencer’s The Salt Line.

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