A Wounded Snake

It's 1898 and the "colored" population of Lexington, Kentucky, is trying to cross the boundaries imposed by newly legalized Jim Crow laws while holding onto rights won in the Civil War. We follow the struggle for rights and dignity through the eyes of multiple narrators, especially Noah Webster, the young aide to Robert O'Hara Benjamin (editor, lawyer, sometimes preacher, and social justice advocate.) We also see the struggle through the eyes of Maria Lulu, Benjamin�s young wife, who joins the historic campaign for women's rights. Other narrators include Jake the bartender, Judge Frank Bullock (son of a member of Morgan's Raider's, ) and even Noah�s mamma.

Black and women's rights intertwine in unexpected ways through a wide spectrum of life in turn-of-the-century Fayette County, Kentucky. We move from raucous and dangerous saloons to horse-racing where black jockeys are driven from the sport, to rural black schools, turbulent neighborhoods of the slums of Lexington, and the halls and chambers of the Fayette County Courthouse. Race boundaries are crossed as sometimes our heroes are joined by whites of extraordinary good will, such as prominent social workers struggling to overcome part of their racist upbringing.

For this is Lexington, Kentucky, a border state where borders--even racist borders--sometimes get crossed, and where faith that things will get better somehow still survives. Racism runs deep, but so does the determination of the characters here within A Wounded Snake.