There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene

Last Man Out (2003) , Greene's third book, drew upon events that followed the Springhill mine disaster in Canada in 1958, when Georgia governor Marvin Griffin tried to capitalize on the surviving miners' celebrity only to bring on a public relations disaster that spotlighted the state's racial segregationist laws. The Temple Bombing was also a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the Georgia Historical Society Book Award, and several other awards. Greene's second book, The Temple Bombing (1996) focused on the 1958 bombing of the oldest Jewish temple in Atlanta, the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple on Peachtree Street. Praying for Sheetrock won the Lillian Smith Book Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won many accolades for its journalistic excellence from many newspaper and historical organizations. The setting of Praying for Sheetrock, Georgia's coastal McIntosh County, provided the backdrop for a struggle between a white power structure clinging to the remnants of racist, paternalist white governance, opposed by an insurgent and persistent group of equally determined black activists. Her first book, Praying for Sheetrock (1991),investigated a coastal Georgia power struggle between two men, one black and one white. Greene has won multiple awards for her work. One woman Greene describes as 'tiny, curly-haired, bright-eyed,' 3 while another 'is distracted from her thoughts by hummingbirds in the yard,' 4 characteristic, vivid descriptions with which Greene manages to bring life to all the people who appear in her writings. Meanwhile Green's interview subjects, even the apparently minor ones, receive similar precious attention to detail. Cotton, and human chattel, had passed through early Atlanta, and changed hands for cash in early Atlanta, without ever becoming the city's mainstays. The young city stood on a rocky shelf of land overlooking the moist black-earthed cotton kingdom. Greene's intimate portraits of people are drawn from both interviews and extensive research, and her personal approach to her stories, in the words of one critic, produces 'spellbinding narrative written with fierce moral passion.' 1 In The Temple Bombing she describes Atlanta: After she graduated from Oberlin College with high honors in 1975, Greene returned to work for the Savannah office of Georgia Legal Services, and she has lived in Georgia ever since. Greene was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1952, and her family moved to Ohio in 1959. Melissa Fay Greene is a Georgia journalist and author known for her bestselling nonfiction accounts of tragic historical events and the experiences of people who, faced with great pain and obstacles, have managed to survive.

There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene