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Overview
When Richard Rubin, fresh out of the Ivy League, accepts a job at a daily newspaper in the old Delta town of Greenwood, Mississippi, he is thrust into a place as different from his hometown of New York as any in the country. Yet to his surprise, he is warmly welcomed by the townspeople and soon finds his first great scoop in Handy Campbell, a poor, black teen and gifted high school quarterback who goes on to win a spot on Mississippi State's team -- a training ground for the NFL.Six years later, Rubin, back in New York, learns that Handy is locked up in Greenwood, accused of capital murder. Returning south to cover the trial, Rubin follows the trail that took Handy from the football field to county jail. As the best and worst elements of Mississippi rise up to do battle over one man's fate, Rubin must confront his own unresolved feelings about the confederacy of silence that initially enabled him to thrive in Greenwood but ultimately forced him to leave it.
Synopsis
When Richard Rubin, fresh out of the Ivy League, accepts a job at a daily newspaper in the old Delta town of Greenwood, Mississippi, he is thrust into a place as different from his hometown of New York as any in the country. Yet to his surprise, he is warmly welcomed by the townspeople and soon finds his first great scoop in Handy Campbell, a poor, black teen and gifted high school quarterback who goes on to win a spot on Mississippi State's team -- a training ground for the NFL.
Six years later, Rubin, back in New York, learns that Handy is locked up in Greenwood, accused of capital murder. Returning south to cover the trial, Rubin follows the trail that took Handy from the football field to county jail. As the best and worst elements of Mississippi rise up to do battle over one man's fate, Rubin must confront his own unresolved feelings about the confederacy of silence that initially enabled him to thrive in Greenwood but ultimately forced him to leave it.
The New Yorker
At the age of twenty-one, Rubin, an Ivy League-educated New Yorker, went to work as a sportswriter in Greenwood, Mississippi. Almost in spite of himself, he came to love Greenwood, even as he remained aware of the ways in which the New South resembled the old. He also befriended a black high-school quarterback who he believed would become an N.F.L. star. Five years after Rubin left town, though, he heard that the player had been indicted for murder, and he returned to find out what had gone wrong. His investigation leads him to some dubious conclusions (particularly about college football), but his willingness to look honestly at the complexity of race in today's South is invigorating, and the book's conclusion, when Rubin realizes just how much he has not understood, is shattering.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Richard Rubin had an Ivy League degree in his hand, but, fresh out of college, the best job opportunity he could find was that of a cub reporter on a small-town newspaper in Greenwood, Mississippi. There, in the deepest part of the Deep South, Rubin eked out an existence, churning out stories of church socials and high school sports; and there he met Handy Campbell. Campbell, then only 17, was the star of the local football team, a poor young black man who seemed destined for pro football greatness. Rubin was astonished when, only six years later, he heard through a friend that Handy Campbell was sitting in a Greenwood jail, awaiting trial for capital murder. Confederacy of Silence, part memoir and part community portrait, has the complexity and grace of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.The New Yorker
At the age of twenty-one, Rubin, an Ivy League-educated New Yorker, went to work as a sportswriter in Greenwood, Mississippi. Almost in spite of himself, he came to love Greenwood, even as he remained aware of the ways in which the New South resembled the old. He also befriended a black high-school quarterback who he believed would become an N.F.L. star. Five years after Rubin left town, though, he heard that the player had been indicted for murder, and he returned to find out what had gone wrong. His investigation leads him to some dubious conclusions (particularly about college football), but his willingness to look honestly at the complexity of race in today's South is invigorating, and the book's conclusion, when Rubin realizes just how much he has not understood, is shattering.Publishers Weekly
With no prospects for employment after his Ivy League graduation in 1988, Rubin, a 21-year-old Jewish New Yorker, accepted a job as a reporter in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. At the Greenwood Commonwealth Rubin covered sports and local news, wrote obituaries and features and photographed "local color." He also followed the short, happy career of Handy T. Campbell, an African-American high school quarterback from the projects and this story forms the core of the book. Rubin believed Campbell's prowess on the gridiron would parallel Rubin's own promise in the newsroom. But after a year wrestling with his conscience for not decrying abhorrent attitudes and behavior he encountered in the bigoted bigwigs of Leflore County, Rubin fled. Six years later, he returned to Greenwood to understand how the star athlete (now an Ole Miss dropout) and an accomplice could find themselves indicted for the murder of a local UPS man rumored to be bisexual. Rubin focuses the latter part of his book on the sleazy maneuverings of college recruiters and coaches, the investigation into the victim's death, and the prosecution of the trial, which provides the book's frisson. The narrative benefits from Rubin's perceptive observations, but it is his emotional investment in the story that coheres the book's two halves: a memoir of a watershed year in his life and the sordid, convoluted tale of a gross miscarriage of justice. A grittier depiction of the New Old South than Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, to which it will undoubtedly be compared, Rubin's memoir exposes the racial polarity of the Delta in clear, effective prose. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.The New Yorker
[Rubin's] willingness to look honestly at the complexity of race in today's South is invigorating, and the book's conclusion...is shattering.
The Washington Post
A page-turner....Rubin seems to have gone to school on the fine writers in whom Mississippi abounds, [including] Eudora Welty and Willie Morris.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[Rubin] brings Greenwood to life as a real place full of real people....Confederacy of Silence is a moving, even haunting account of how the "New South" isn't as new as we'd like to think.
KLIATT
Fresh out of Penn State in 1988, young Richard Rubin decided to try his hand at journalism. Having no experience, he took the only job that looked promising, writing about high school sports for a newspaper in Greenwood, Mississippi. He'd heard about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy who had been murdered just around the corner from Greenwood in 1955 for being fresh to a white woman. In his naiveté, Rubin assumed that the South had changed. Over the course of the year he lived there he was disabused of this notion. His confederacy of silence was like that of the native whites; don't discuss racial problems. He met bigots but learned to smile while secretly hating what they stood for. Finally, it became too much for him and he went back to New York. Six years later, he returned to Greenwood to cover the murder trial of a once-promising black high school football player, Handy Campbell, who against the odds had been accepted at Ole Miss when Rubin lived in Mississippi. This is the story of Handy and others like him, as well as Richard Rubin's coming of age. Written with unrelenting truth and copious detail, Rubin's autobiography is searing, filled with racial slurs and graphic sexual facts. Recommended for mature teens. KLIATT Codes: SA;Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Atria, 438p.,— Janet Julian