When Emmett Till was murdered aged fourteen for allegedly whistling at a white woman, photographs of his destroyed face became a flashpoint in the civil rights movement. A decade earlier Emmett's father, Louis, had also been killed - court-martialled and hanged. Though the circumstances could hardly have been more different, behind both deaths stood the same crime, of being black.

In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman, born the same year as Emmett Till, investigates the tragic fates of father and son. Mixing research, memoir and imagination, this book is an essential commentary on racism in America - illuminating, humane and profound.

"At times melancholy, at others raw and rippling with rage, Wideman masterfully weaves together memory, history and archival documents . . . Haunting, provocative, and inspired" - * Washington Post *

"This is a book unlike any other . . . Offers a deeply personal inquiry into the life and death of Louis Till . . . Wideman stares down the gaps in the military court records, reading and writing between the lines to reveal the fatal uncertainties of black life" - * Guardian *

"A quietly harrowing postscript to the tragedy of Emmett Till . . . A searching account" - * New York Times Book Review *

"A genre-defying mix of history, biography, and memoir" - * Philadelphia Inquirer *

"Haunting" - * New York Magazine *

"A book seething with the passion and sense of outrage behind the Black Lives Matter movement that also traces specific roots of the movement's genealogy" - * Kirkus Reviews *