Out of the Night that Covers Me

In Bainbridge, Alabama, eight-year-old John Gallatin McMillan III has been the center of his mother's world, cloistered and pampered, until she unexpectedly dies. Taken away by his one remaining relative, his mother's sister, John soon learns that the new home awaiting him in Lower Peach Tree is a run-down tenant farm in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt. There he is thrust into a life alien to everything he has ever known, working long hours in the fields for his violent, alcoholic uncle.

As John fights for his survival, he comes to identify with the struggles of the poor blacks he encounters, and imagines that his salvation lies in escape to Chicago, just as they feel that their own survival depends on going north to a new life. Instead, a twist of fate brings him to the Bend, a black settlement that has become a refuge for outcasts. Here John finds himself in the middle of the brutal confrontation between blacks and whites that will foreshadow the historic struggle about to sweep the country.

A powerful drama of prejudice and lost innocence, indomitable courage, and the secret corners of a child's heart, Out of the Night that Covers Me is a testament to Pat Cunningham Devoto's extraordinary talent.