Truevine (Macy)

Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
Beth Macy, 2016
Little, Brown
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316337540


Summary
The true story of two African-American brothers who were kidnapped and displayed as circus freaks, and whose mother endured a 28-year struggle to get them back.

The year was 1899 and the place a sweltering tobacco farm in the Jim Crow South town of Truevine, Virginia. George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family.

One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever.

Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars."

Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back.

Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1964
• Raised—Ubana, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Bowling Green University
• Awards—Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism (more below)
• Currently—lives in Roanoke, Virginia


Beth Macy is an American journalist and author of two works of non-fiction: Factory Town: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town (2014) and Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South  (2016).

Raised in Urbana, Ohio, an industrial town, Macy's mother was a line worker in an airplane factory and watched other people’s children while the parents worked. As Macy has pointed out, this was a time, back in the '70s and early '80s, when one it was still possible to raise a family on working wages and, with a little Federal aid, manage to send your children to college.

Macy attended Bowling Green University (on a Pell Grant) and graduated in 1986 with a degree in journalism. Following brief stints in Columbus, Ohio, and Savannah, Georgia, in 1989 Macy found herself in Roanoke, Virginia, where she began a 25-year career at the Roanoke Times. She won countless awards for stories that highlighted teen pregnancy, immigrant populations, and other often overlooked topics in the Roanoke area.

Journalism awards
Macy's 2006 series on immigrant families won several national honors, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a Columbia University race reporting prize and inclusion in "The Best Newspaper Writing: 2007-2008."

In 2008, Macy produced a multi-media presentation about the challenges facing the area's seniors and caregivers. The series won a Documentary Project of the Year (from Pictures of the Year International), the Associated Press Managing Editors' Award for online convergence, a Casey Medal and, the Virginia Press Association's top prize for public-service reporting.

In 2010, Macy won a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. Her November 2010 story about cholera in Haiti won the 2011 Associated Press Managing Editors award for international reporting. (Author bio adapted by LitLovers from various sources.)

Book Reviews
[An] expert work of nonfiction…. Ms. Macy gives herself several objectives for the strange story told in Truevine. First and foremost, she wants to examine the story that members of the Muse family believed for 100 years, even though Ms. Macy could quickly tell that it couldn't withstand scrutiny. Second, at a time when Roanoke remains a city that "demographers still consider among the most segregated in the South" and racial tensions have been aroused throughout the nation, she means to provide an eerily resonant vision of the past. And last, though hardly least, she wants to try to understand what happened to the Muses…. Ms. Macy's…reportorial methods are inspiringly persistent.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Macy’s conscientious reporting (affirming the story's accuracy) and her vigorous storytelling make the saga of George and Willie Muse even more enthralling than fiction. It is also by turns infuriating, heartbreaking and, ultimately, inspiring in recounting a mother’s struggle, through daunting odds, to not only find her lost children, but to secure their proper treatment by the people exploiting them.
USA Today


There’s a page-turner buried in Macy’s meandering account, but multiple backstories—circus history, Roanoke history, Jim Crow life for blacks and whites, Macy’s personal memoir..., and snippets from scholarly writing—disrupt the reader’s focus.
Publishers Weekly


Macy's exploration of the long-hidden fate of two young African Americans and how that fate illuminates the atrocities of the Jim Crow South is as compelling as Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks...both are absolutely stunning examples of narrative nonfiction at its best...Certain to be among the most memorable books of the year. ―Connie Fletcher
Booklist


[S]ituates so-called circus "curiosities" firmly in U.S. history.... A rambling, colorful, and thought-provoking medley of human stories intersecting with one another...has much to offer. —Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Macy absorbed...individual (and often conflicting) interpretations of the Muse kidnappings...into a sturdy, passionate, and penetrating narrative. This first-rate journey into human trafficking, slavery, and familial bonding is an engrossing example of spirited, determined reportage.
Kirkus Reviews

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