In this powerful companion to his debut novel, Red Clay, Charles B. Fancher paints a portrait of small-town love, loss, and redemption in the Jim Crow South.

In Red Clay, Alabama, of 1905, everybody knows Edna Mae Daniels. At least they think they do, and if you ask them, they’ll be glad to tell you all about her, the community’s very own Whore of Babylon, a Black woman who swans around in the latest fashions, turning the heads of men—white and Black—eager to pay for her company. Red Clay’s white women resent Edna Mae’s existence, while Black women scorn or envy her in equal measure.

But there is a lot more to Edna Mae than most could imagine, and over the course of a few short months she finds herself at the center of events that shake the established Jim Crow order—a dangerous time when the horrors of chattel slavery persist in living memory, when the hard-won achievements of the Reconstruction era have all but evaporated, and when dreams for a better future will be realized only by those with the guts and brains to will them into existence.

Caught in a crucible of threats and adversity, Edna Mae discovers strengths she never knew she had, a capacity to love and be loved that she never imagined, and maternal instincts she never believed would be hers to nurture—especially not in the care of a young white woman whose father is mixed up in a plot to strip Edna Mae Daniels of all she holds dear. With life and property on the line, tensions rise as Edna Mae’s true value to her community emerges and everyone is forced to rethink their opinions of her.