The Trials of Amos Rayfield

In 1963, Amos Rayfield, the President of a university in Mississippi, is confronted with the issue of the school’s first black applicant. At the same time, Rayfield discovers that an ancestor of his with the same name, owned a slave in the 1840s. As Rayfield, with the help of one of his professors, discovers more about the extraordinary slave his ancestor owned, he also discovers more about the minority applicant, whose family history mirrors that of Rayfield’s own family. Through his discoveries, Rayfield comes to confront his, most deeply, held values as well as the traditions of the South he loves. In chapters alternating between 1963 and the ante-bellum South, the story explores the attitudes and violence that allowed slavery and segregation to flourish for so long in a land dedicated to equality before the law.