THE EMPTY CELL

A literary novel shows how the killing of a Black man by a mob in 1947 shapes the lives of four people.

The lynching of 24-year-old Willie Earle has sent a rippling effect through Greenville, South Carolina. Lee Trammell was a member of the mob that did it—taxi cab drivers all—believing that they were avenging the murder of one of their own. Lee is put on trial with the rest of the men responsible, but his ultimate guilt and punishment will not be decided by any court. Alma Stone knew Willie when he was a child, though they haven’t been close for a long time. Willie’s death is the final straw that convinces her to leave the South for Harlem, where she hopes things are different for Black people. Alma is the maid of Lawton Chastain, the lawyer tasked with prosecuting the lynching case. Lawton now realizes he made a mistake marrying his wife, Lydia, instead of running off with a man he loved long ago. Lawton’s daughter, Betsy, is in high school when the trial begins, but she’s haunted by it long after. She, too, considers an escape to New York City. Even years after the verdict, Willie’s death continues to challenge the various survivors to plot escapes from the prisons of their circumstances. Alden’s prose is lyrical and immersive, particularly Lee’s sections, written in the first person: “I went on over to the Yellow Cab office. I checked my time sheets with Bill Shockley, and he said to me, ‘Let the law handle it. You’re going to get yourself in a peck a’ trouble.’ I told him you can’t stop no flood. When I come on outside, there was maybe ten or twelve cabs there, not just Yellow but Blue Bird and American.” Readers will wish at times that the author had chosen less sympathetic characters to explore—the lone villain, Lee, is consumed with redemptive guilt. But there are many things to admire about the tale’s unpredictable structure, deep characterization, and the combination of audacity and humility with which Alden approaches her subject. Less a novel about racism than a book about people thinking about racism, it manages to embody many concerns of the current zeitgeist.

A richly drawn portrait of racial injustice in an earlier era.