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"The Barn is the most brutal, layered and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read ... Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this." - Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division and Heavy: An American Memoir. "An incredible history of a crime that changed America." - John Grisham"With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi - baring, sweat, soil, and heart all the way through." - Imani Perry. A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long Wright Thompson's family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it.