Open Road
Review by Jinny Webber
Based on an infamous episode from Georgia history as experienced by two childhood friends, Ain’t No Grave paints a unique picture of early twentieth century history. Versions of the story have appeared ever since these shocking events of 1915, most notably the musical ‘Parade,’ but Mary Glickman’s novel gives an inside view.
In 1906, nine-year-old Ruby Johnson and Max Sassaport are drawn together. Smart, lonely, and bullied in school, they develop a deep, innocent love. She’s the daughter of a sharecropper and he’s the Jewish son of the owner of the town’s only dry goods store, so their friendship must remain secret. The book begins with their idyllic times playing together in the woods outside Heard, Georgia. They know that at a certain age, black and white children will be separated, but when? To learn their fortunes they seek out Mayhayley Lancaster, the Oracle of Heard County, living in the backwoods. She predicts that not only will Ruby and Max be parted, but they will not be permitted to to speak to each other. Then, in the distant future, they will reconnect in a city.
Their time together becomes more precious, but when she’s eleven, a vicious act forces Ruby to flee. She makes her way to Atlanta where she finds work as a child laborer in the National Pencil Factory. To get news about Ruby, Max takes her father to see Mayhayley. Ruby is alive and doing fine, but the Oracle warns Max that a great darkness will come to him and he must avoid falling into it.
Five years later, still pining for Ruby, Max moves to Atlanta where he becomes a cub reporter working for the leading writer of the Atlanta Journal, Harold Ross. When Ross sends him to an informant who works for the factory where a crime was committed, she turns out to be Ruby Johnson. The darkness Mayhayley predicted begins with this violent murder of a 13-year old white girl at that factory.
From here on, Ain’t No Grave becomes tense and dangerous. Not only are there racial hostilities, but the virulent anti-Semitism of pogroms in the old world described by Max’s grandparents threaten in Atlanta. Although Ross writes the occasional human interest story for the Journal, he’s a fact-based reporter. His polar opposite is Tom Watson, editor of the racist, anti-Semitic, Weekly Jeffersonian, who fires up mob emotions with his sensational reporting. Journalism, mostly yellow, plays a big part in the story, as does corruption of the law as Leo Frank, the Jewish supervisor of the factory where Mary Phagan was murdered, is tried for the crime.
In their separate ways, Ruby and Max are involved in these events, and throughout try to maintain their bond, now blossomed into an abiding adult love. Darkness could easily subsume them both. Their forbidden relationship and perspective on these horrific events create a suspenseful, tightly written story.
Most of the characters in this novel, named after the bluegrass song ‘Ain’t No Grave,’ are historical. Among them are Harold Ross, who later founded The New Yorker; Tom Watson, publisher, politician and later vice presidential candidate; and the prosecuting lawyer Hugh Dorsey with his shady tactics who became a governor of Georgia.
Mayhayley Lancaster too is historic: Dot Moore wrote her biography, Oracle of the Ages: Reflections on the Curious Life of Fortune Teller Mayhayley Lancaster.
UCSB historian Albert Lindemann’s study, The Jew Accused, treats three anti-Semitic trials including Leo Frank’s. The Ku Klux Klan was revived after the murder of Mary Phagan, and the Anti-Defamation League was formed: each side organized.
What strikes the reader of Glickman’s novel is how much of the hatred and injustice she depicts survived, with such men as Dorsey and Watson elected to office and the rhetoric of more than a hundred years ago still declaimed in some quarters. However, the Anti-Defamation League and other voices of reason and benevolence remain persuasive, and standards of law and journalism have improved.
