Truevile by Beth Macy

This book is the first of three award-winning national best-sellers from Beth Macy, whose success with books has allowed her to quit her job as a reporter for the Roanoke newspaper. Factory Man and Dopesick have followed. Truevine actually is the name of a town in Franklin County, Virginia, in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge. That is where two African-American brothers, George and Willie Muse, were enticed with a piece of candy in the year 1899 into joining the circus. They performed world-wide as racist caricatures including cannibals, sheep-headed freaks and even "Ambassadors from Mars." This is the story of their lives growing up in a sharecroppers family and being thrust into a demeaning kind of fame. It is also the story of their mother's 28 year quest to get them back home. "If over a hundred years ago there had been Black Lives Matter, the mother of George and Willie Muse would have joined and marched for the safe return of her sons. Back then, almost a century ago, she