Look Unto the Land (Small Town Race Relations)

When Henry Grant returns to Indiana after WWI, he finds his family decimated by illness, abuse, and debt. He can't change that, but alone and with nothing to lose, he can punish the man he blames for it. If he can find him. By 1922, Henry believes he is hiding in southern Arkansas, amid the chaos of Prohibition and the country's latest oil boom.Henry follows the fellow to Berrytown, a once-sleepy village now overflowing with lease hounds, roughnecks, drillers, bootleggers, and gamblers, all come to cash in on black gold. Crime is rampant and the Ku Klux Klan is stirring racial tension while also warring on booze and prostitution. It's a good place to hide and a hard place to search. To get around, Henry takes a job as a mule skinner hauling drilling supplies, only to learn that his boss is a bootlegger.Mary Dutton, a widow struggling to support herself and her twelve-year-old son Jimmy, is caught up in a different web of illegal substances. She works in a pharmacy where the owners-Mary's cousin Eunice and her husband-are forcing her to sell marijuana, cocaine, and heroin under the nose of federal agents.Otis Leatherwood, a farmer who is Mary's beloved uncle and Eunice's estranged father, likes moonshine and is unaware of the drug traffic. His problem is with the oil. He believes drilling is ruining the environment, and he's willing to risk everything to stop it, even though his best friend and Black neighbor Isaiah Watson sees it as a means of escaping bigotry in the South. As Berrytown grows apace and oil blackens the land, all of them face life-changing decisions.