Uproar at Dancing Rabbit Creek

In late 1990, Ed Netherland - a renegade Tennessee entrepreneur driven both by financial gain and his own battle with cancer - actively sought the endorsement of Noxubee County, Mississippi, for his company's toxic-waste disposal facility. He was armed with cash and promises of new jobs, but he met unexpected opposition: Martha Blackwell, a white housewife and descendant of the planter class, helped to organize a movement to stop the dump. However, Netherland also made unlikely allies: poor blacks and poor whites, who united to push for new jobs and the opportunity to wrest political and economic power from the landed families. Their effort was led and personified by the self-styled savior of Noxubee's black majority, Ike Brown. The ensuing battle tore the county apart, pitting families, friends, and even entire church congregations against one another, unleashing century-old hatreds and blood feuds. . At the heart of the story lies control over the land, an issue William Faulkner saw as the "curse" of Southern history (Dancing Rabbit Creek was the site of an 1830 federal treaty with the Choctaw Indians, leading to their forced exodus). Only the characters are new: with Blackwell, Brown, and Netherland, there is Prentiss "Printz" Bolin, the former Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Trent Lott, who returned home to Noxubee County as local salesman of a waste dump proposed by Netherland's competitors; Ralph Higginbotham, the white president of the county Board of Supervisors, who was supported by blacks but derided by prosperous whites as a "hillbilly"; Essie Spencer, a retired school teacher and leading black opponent of the toxic dump; and a host of other vividly drawn characters.