The Barn

Haunting . . . The Barn is part investigative journalism, part catharsis. Thompson travels back and forth through space and time, describing a brutal murder on one page, riffing about the blues on another. The story meanders like the myriad tributaries of the Mississippi. The writing is often breathtaking, brutality amplified through perfectly crafted prose. -- Gerard deGroot * The Times *
Extraordinary . . . Not only an intimate history of the tragedy, but also a deep meditation on Mississippi and America . . . While sifting through the dirt that buried the facts about Till’s death, Thompson credits the work of the historians, journalists and filmmakers who have sought to tell the true tale. But he crafts a wider, deeper narrative. The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel . . . Describes not just the poison of silence and lies, but also the dignity of courage and truth. * Washington Post *
With a passion for truth and justice, and a fierce determination to dig for the secrets, Wright Thompson has produced an incredible history of a crime that changed America. * John Grisham *
It literally changed my outlook on the world . . . incredible. * Shonda Rhimes *
Powerfully pieces together the true story of a horrific murder in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. -- Books of the Month * Independent *
Powerful and unflinching . . . What’s unforgettable by the end of Thompson’s book is just how thoroughly this country was built on a belief that some people were worthless and expendable because of the color of their skin . . . Books like The Barn offer some hope that America can heal its oldest and deepest wound. * Associated Press *
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 . . . Every generation you get a few writers with the engine of a 747 and the skill of a wizard. We see it in Ward, Wright, Faulkner and Trethewey. And that finely crafted motor is on full display in this work by Wright Thompson. The Barn is the new standard in research and book-making. * Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir *
In this important, diligently researched, and beautifully rendered story, Wright Thompson takes up one of the most consequential and tragic events of the twentieth century, the murder of Emmett Till, in the place where it happened. The land, the people, and circumstance are vivid on every page. 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. Most of all, Thompson teaches us that history is the most important ghost story there is to tell, and that we - the haunted - must be healed. * Imani Perry, Professor in African and African American Studies, Harvard University *
Terrifying and humbling, The Barn is a chilling examination of the American strain of a nasty human disorder: the slow immolation that some communities initiate when they choose enabling mythologies, deceit, silence, injustice, and willed ignorance as their moral orders. * Boston Globe *
A gut-punch of a book . . . Foregoing the harrowing photos that emphasize Till’s martyrdom, Thompson dives instead into family trees, court transcripts, witness memoirs and more to unearth the enormous human tragedy we forget at our peril. * LA Times *
Crucial facts about this historic injustice are still coming to light, many of which are gathered in Wright Thompson’s gripping, thoroughly researched account of the night Till was murdered - in a barn just over 20 miles from Thompson’s family farm - and the cover up that followed (and continues to this day). * LitHub *
This book is not only a retelling of the crime - a story that Till’s family, among others, has already published - but also a rich and wandering history of the township in which Till died: the few square miles of plantations that helped birth both the blues and the Ku Klux Klan. Thompson writes movingly of more than one “enormous web of interconnected people” in the Delta, and of the ongoing fight to commemorate its lynchings. He brings a local’s intensity to the project: the book is as much about his neighbors, and even his kin, as it is about his country. * The New Yorker *
This book combines serious journalism and reporting alongside nuanced writing to look in depth at the brutal murder of Emmett Till. The book dives into the how and the why, focusing on the state of Mississippi itself and the role of property, money, power, and white supremacy. * Buzzfeed *
Thompson writes with a tone of relentless urgency at once tempered by a deep reflection on what becomes, ultimately, a seemingly unavoidable trajectory, a cataclysmic inevitability—the consequences of material greed and cruel disregard . . . He writes, too, with a true storyteller’s gift for language and image, and the ability to make grand connections across time and space, to see all the forces culminating in one terrible moment, all the lives destroyed or forever marked by what happened that night. * Natasha Trethewey, former Poet Laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry *
A profoundly affecting, brilliantly narrated story of both an infamous murder and its unexpected consequences. * Kirkus Reviews *
You’ll almost be able to feel the gumbo mud . . . Thompson uses a narrow barn as a pivot point to reach back in history, to Reconstruction and slavery, Jim Crow and differences in racism in the North and South, Delta culture, and the biography of a boy, in a story that’s both personal and local, and that’ll keep you glued to your seat . . . The Barn is a tale that’s hard to read, but also one you can’t look away from. * Philadelphia Tribune *
The Barn is the perfect combination of suspense, history, and truth. Within these pages, readers will journey alongside Thompson as he unearths the chilling details of the murder of Emmett Till. Through meticulous research and a gripping narrative, Thompson reckons with the complexities surrounding this case and the systemic corruption that relentlessly works to bury the truth. * SheReads *
In this arresting, insightful book, Wright Thompson takes a deep dive into the historical record to guide us on a compelling, thousand-year international journey of power, greed, corruption and injustice, leading inevitably to the lynching of Emmett Till. * Christopher Benson, Associate Professor, Medill School of Journalism; co-author of A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till *