The Bootheel

The Bootheel of Missouri is a land of cotton. It is flat, hot and humid. The days pass slowly, except at cotton-picking time when a frenzy sets in to harvest the crop. Over the years, the people of the region have suffered through earthquakes, flooding and racial unrest. In the early 1950s, a young, white minister and his wife arrive in the Bootheel. Fresh out of seminary, the minister has accepted a call to be the pastor of what, unbeknownst to him, is an all-black church. The couple is viewed with suspicion by the white establishment and as curiosities by their black congregation. They become embroiled in an election campaign to unseat a bigoted county judge. The campaign descends into escalating acts of racial violence. When that violence reaches the minister's door, he must choose between the safety of his young family and devotion to his black parishioners. The couple's son, who was a fetus in the womb and a newborn infant when his parents were in the Bootheel, narrates the story. To do so, he must rely on the memories of others as well as his own imagination and life experiences, making The Bootheel as much his story as that of his parents.