Providence (Literataure and the Religious Spirit)

Hailed as Will Campbell's most literary work, Providence chronicles the more than 170-year history of a square mile of plantation land in Holmes County, Mississippi. Shifting between history and autobiography, Campbell illustrates the quest for justice among the Choctaws, African-Americans, and Whites on the parcel of land designated Section 13. From the forcible removal of native Choctaws, to slavery and sharecropping on the Providence Plantation, to an interracial cooperative farm in the 1930s-50s, and finally to the present-day ownership by the Department of the Interior, Providence, according to Campbell, "has seen a lot. In a way its saga is the story of the nation."