“Ain’t No Grave” begins as a heartwarming tale of forbidden love between the son of a Jewish shop owner and daughter of a Black sharecropper. But Mary Glickman’s sixth novel quickly evolves into a fascinating retelling of a horrific event in Georgia’s history, the 1915 lynching of Jewish American businessman Leo Frank. Ultimately, this germane work of historical fiction provides a rousing education on the 20th century resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and subsequent founding of the Anti-Defamation League.
At the heart of Glickman’s story are Ruby Johnson and Max Sassaport, two endearing 9-year-olds who are already in love at the novel’s opening. They bond after being bullied but know it’s only a matter of time before their friendship is forbidden. As Ruby tells it, their fictional town of Buckwood is the kind of place where “one day you had a white friend, and the next day you did not.”
Ruby and Max seek the advice of neighboring oracle Mayhayley Lancaster to learn if they share a future. In a book brimming with unique characters, Lancaster is one of the most memorable. A one-eyed woman who lives alone in a rural cabin, she has “the long cheeks of a horse, her face plain as a pancake.” Like many of Glickman’s side characters, Lancaster is based on a historical figure — the first woman to run for Georgia state legislature, a Heard County lawyer who aided in Leo Frank’s defense.
Ruby and Max’s visit to Lancaster’s house ushers in their greatest fear: alienation from each other. Separation is their punishment for stealing money from their parents to pay for Lancaster’s fortune-telling services. This breach in morality reappears a few times as they bend the rules to stay connected, which in Buckwood means defying their parents and meeting in secret.
Lancaster’s prediction that Ruby and Max will spend long amounts of time apart before ultimately winding up together eventually launches the duo on their coming-of-age journey that leads from Atlanta to Chicago and back.
Glickman uses a fictional figure named Fenton Smalls to provide context for what later happens to Leo Frank and illustrate how early-20th century racism impacted different communities. Smalls was a Black reporter who was lynched following his conviction for the rape and murder of a white woman before Ruby and Max were born. When Max’s Uncle Morris shows up in Buckwood selling Smalls memorabilia, he includes a lynching postcard featuring Smalls’ “underneath the hangin’ tree” with picnickers celebrating in the background.
Max’s father refuses to sell the memorabilia in the family store, but Max is so desperate to raise enough money to run away with Ruby, he sees opportunity, not exploitation, and secretly charges classmates a fee for an up-close look at the memorabilia.
Max’s involvement comes from a place of ignorance, not malice, but still hurts Ruby and causes conflict between them. There are a handful of other instances where Max participates in activities that trade on the suppression of Black Americans. Glickman uses things like a Confederate Day parade to illustrate how white supremacy was de rigueur in the early part of the 1900s.
Although Ruby doesn’t absolve Max, she accepts the money he collects from his schoolmates so she can leave town before he does.
When Ruby and Max reunite in Atlanta, in their teens, the reality of living under segregation takes on a deeply oppressive shape. They cannot eat in the same restaurants, ride in the same train cars or shop at the same stores. The young couple can walk together, if they remain unobserved. There is one place they can go, a tavern called Dark Sally’s that rents rooms and doesn’t discriminate.
These social constraints don’t dilute their passions for each other. And, unlike other young folks who are intimate and face the natural result, Ruby and Max are curiously unburdened with concerns of pregnancy.
The young couple finds work: Max is a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution, and Ruby works at the National Pencil Factory. They save money to move to Chicago as Atlanta reaches a tipping point. The city is already a hotbed of racial intolerance fueled by the reassembling KKK. Citywide antisemitism surges when Frank is arrested for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, an employee of the pencil factory, which Frank oversees.
Meanwhile, Ruby has a history with Mary she’s desperate remains buried, and Max faces increasing danger covering Frank’s trial, conviction and ultimate lynching at the hands of a frenzied mob.
As Glickman’s inventive storytelling blends with historical facts, Ruby and Max intersect with a multitude of historical figures. Atlanta Journal reporter Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker, makes a cameo as Max’s mentor. While working for Ross, Max interviews the founders of the Anti-Defamation League. And their old friend Mayhayley Lancaster makes a reappearance as she aids in Frank’s case, among numerous others.
Mary Glickman has delivered an exciting, accessible and historically informative story about a dangerous time in America’s history. Although a wildly entertaining read, “Ain’t No Grave” is also a terrifying reminder of what can happen when the objective shifts from justice to vengeance.
In 1986, Leo Frank was pardoned for Mary Phagan’s murder. Nobody was ever arrested for his.
FICTION
“Ain’t No Grave”
by Mary Glickman
Open Road Media
280 pages, $21.99
AUTHOR EVENT
Mary Glickman. In Conversation with John Lemley. Author Talk, Q&A and Book Signing. Noon, Nov. 13. $19.50. Book Festival of the MJCCA. Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Atlanta. 678-812-4000, www.atlantajcc.org
