In the Dark of the Moon

In 1962, in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr., tries and fails in his first attempts at nonviolent resistance. Rural churches harboring voter registration workers are routinely torched by Night Riders. Ku Klux Klan activities are at a peak, and law enforcement is often an accomplice.

Kansas Lacey is twelve years old, intensely curious about a world she devours through National Geographic magazines and endless questions for the adults in her life. She has lived near Albany in Sumner, Georgia, with her grandparents and their hired help, since her mother’s suicide years earlier. The Lacey family is prominent and respected, but riddled with an unspoken history of insanity, repression, addiction, and violence. Kansas catalogues these secrets as she uncovers them, determined to find out where she came from and why her mother killed herself.

With a big heart and an unflinching eye, Suzanne Hudson has given us a powerful coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the dawning Civil Rights movement; the story of a girl who believes that in piecing together her history she will somehow figure out who she wants to become.