Crossing Downs

In the late 1920s, a terrible accident sends Curtis Lowe – a black teenager, who works on his parent’s cotton farm – through the nightmarish world of Alabama’s convict-lease system, which takes him from a convict farm on the coastal plains inhabited by starving inmates to the massive prison mining complexes outside Birmingham; along the way he survives whippings, torturous guards, and unspeakable violations in the hopes of finding his freedom and bringing the whole system to a halt.