William Russell

A Wind is Rising William Russell

A searing, brutally realistic novel of race relations in the deep south, finally back in print for the first time in 70 years.

"A powerful and moving novel that should be widely read," Cincinnati Enquirer

Acting bad came easily to everyone on the huge, isolated Mississippi delta plantation...until the tensions between the white overseers and the black sharecroppers exploded in bloodshed... leaving a white man dead and Brother Jackson, a black man, falsely jailed for murder and facing certain death in a rigged trial.

In desperation, Beal Jackson journeys to New York to seek help for his brother.... and becomes the darling of liberal Greenwich Village whites who see him as a cause, rather than a man trying to right a wrong and prevent a lynching. Or is the white attention he gets actually insidious, a uniquely brutal new form of black exploitation? The answer could cost Beal his brother's life.

"A powerful and moving novel that should be widely read," Cincinnati Enquirer

"Among novels of the deep south, this is one of the best." The Observer (London)

"A thrilling novel of race relations in the deep south." Richmond Times Dispatch

"There is struggle, bootlegging, and violence. William Russell knows his Delta country well and shows great understanding of the problems there. A compassionate story of plantation life." Winston County Journal

"The most moving and convincing novel of the South that I have ever read. It has just the right degree of realism...it spares no one." Howard University Professor Alain LeRoy Locke, the first African-American Rhodes Scholar.