Writing to Save a Life by John Edgar Wideman (Sent for You Yesterday, Philadelphia Fire) is a heartfelt and emotionally bruising mix of journalism, memoir and fictional vignettes that tackles the relationships between fathers and sons, familial and societal wounds, and racial injustice in the United States. The lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955, for wolf whistling at a white woman, serves as the starting point. Till's mother famously permitted an open casket funeral for her son, and Wideman would remain haunted by a Jet magazine photograph of the young man's battered face at the funeral.
While researching the Till case many years later, Wideman discovered that Louis Till, Emmett's father, was arrested and hanged for rape and murder in Italy during World War II. This set Wideman off on a multi-generational, multi-continent journey that touches on his relationship with his father. He traveled to France to visit Louis Till's gravesite, and after reviewing Till's court martial records, which he received after countless false turns, Wideman reaches the conclusion that Till the elder was probably railroaded. He ties Emmett's tragic case to the wider ramifications for people of color in a tragically flawed justice system while also meditating on his fraught and wounded relationship with his father: "Why couldn't I say then what I would say now--you're always part of the picture, Dad. Picture is you, me, both of us and this whole precarious family in the sh*t together."
Wideman concocts a heady literary brew from straight reportage of court transcripts, fictional vignettes of an imaginary version of Louis Till and powerful memories of his own journeys. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant