Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File, Paperback

A major literary figure tells ``a searching tale of loss, recovery, and deja vu that is part memoir and what-if speculation, part polemic and expose`` (The Washington Post) about two generations of one family--civil rights martyr Emmett Till and his father, Louis--shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Emmett Till took a train from his home in Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi; a few weeks later he returned home dead. Murdered because he was a colored boy and had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till, chose to display her son's brutalized face in a glass-topped casket, ``so the world can see what they did to my baby.``

Emmett Till's murder and his mother's refusal to allow his story to be forgotten have become American legends. But one darkly significant twist in the Till legend is rarely mentioned: Louis Till, Emmett's father, Mamie's husband, a soldier during World War II, was executed in Italy for committing rape and murder.

In 1955, when he and Emmett were each only fourteen years old, Wideman saw a horrific photograph of dead Emmett's battered face. Decades later, upon discovering that Louis Till had been court-martialed and hanged, he was impelled to investigate the tragically intertwined fates of father and son. Writing to Save a Life is ``part exploration and part meditation, a searching account ofWideman's] attempt to learn more about the short life of Louis Till`` (The New York Times Book Review) and shine light on the truths that have remained in darkness.

Wideman, the author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, ``is a master of quiet meditation...and his book is remarkable for its insight and power`` (SFGate). An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is essential and ``impressive`` (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) reading--an engaging, enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons.