Truevine : two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest: a true story of the Jim Crow South
(Book)

Book Cover
Published
New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2016.
Format
Book
Edition
First edition.
Status
Port Angeles - Nonfiction (Adult)
791.3509 MACY
1 available
Sequim - Nonfiction (Adult)
791.3509 MACY
1 available

Copies

LocationCall NumberStatus
Port Angeles - Nonfiction (Adult)791.3509 MACYAvailable
Sequim - Nonfiction (Adult)791.3509 MACYAvailable

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Published
New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2016.
Edition
First edition.
Physical Desc
420 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Language
English

Notes

Bibliography
Includes bibliographic references (pages 353-404) and index.
Description
The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back. The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars." Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today.