TTo say that Wright Thompson’s last book is about the murder of Emmett Till would be to underestimate the scope of the book and the ambition of the author. Thompson is investigating Till’s story and believes he has determined how many people were present at the scene of the gruesome murder, which has been a subject of historical debate. But using the barn where 14-year-old Till was murdered in 1955 as a focal point, Thompson expands the horizons to examine such forces as the global cotton economy, American expansion, systemic racism, and a community’s complicity. It explores how these forces collided and how the brutal murder of a Black child in Mississippi was covered up. Thompson spent years reporting and building relationships with Till’s surviving relatives and friends, and his own reckonings with growing up white in the Mississippi Delta are sprinkled throughout the narrative. Although the nearly 400-page narrative is occasionally meandering – you’ll learn quite a bit about blues music –Barn A sensitive, deeply reported book that will make you reexamine everything you thought you knew about the Till lynching and its place in American history.

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