The Sweetest Hallelujah

ELAINE HUSSEY is a highly acclaimed and award-winning novelist who has written under the names Peggy Webb and Anna Michaels. She was born and bred in the south and is from Mississippi, where The Sweetest Hallelujah is set.

In memory of my parents, Clarence and Marie Hussey,

who gave me everything.

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT have been possible without my amazing agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan at Levine Greenberg, and my remarkable editor, Erika Imranyi at Harlequin MIRA. Stephanie encouraged me to finish a story I had started more than ten years earlier, and Erika loved it enough to give it a good home. They guided me throughout the process, and I am forever grateful for their generosity and support.

The journey of my characters in this story is entirely fictional, but I would like to acknowledge the nonfiction books that gave me a better understanding of the obstacles they faced: Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin; Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till, Simeon Wright with Herb Boyd; Free at Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died In The Struggle, Sara Bullard; Civil Rights: Yesterday and Today, Herb Boyd, Todd Burroughs; I Have A Dream: Writings & Speeches That Changed The World, edited by James M. Washington.

My deepest gratitude also goes to The Honorable Judge Jacqueline Estes and David Sparks, Attorney at Law, for invaluable advice about adoption and for research into the amended law of 1955 that made Billie’s adoption possible.

To Jane Talbert, dear friend and former colleague at Mississippi State Univerisy, hugs and a steak dinner for helping me recall the rules that match the writing constructions.

Kudos to my research assistant, the incredible Susan E. Griffith.

The Deep South with its riches of music and food, and eccentric, outrageous, courageous people shaped this story as surely as it shaped me. I have an abiding love for my home, and I hope that shines through.

Thank you for reading. I hope you will laugh and cry at my quirky, redemption-infused story, and I promise to write more of the same.

THE DAY BILLIE’S LIFE changed, she was already knee deep in trouble.

She’d been playing with Lucy after her mama had said not to. Lucy’s little brother, Peanut, had something that was catching, but Billie wasn’t the kind of scaredy-cat who would stop seeing her best friend just because grown-ups said so.

To make sure her mama didn’t know, Billie told Peanut if he opened his trap about her being over there, she’d make him sorry he was ever born. He believed her, too. Around Shakerag, the other kids knew that if they messed with Billie she’d beat the snot out of them.

Calling out, “Bye, Lucy,” she set out for home. But the only way there was past dead Alice’s tree.

Billie hadn’t even been born when they found the body of eleven-year-old Alice Watkins up in the woods behind Gum Pond cut into six pieces. Still, she knew the stories. Everybody in Shakerag did. Somebody with a heart black as sin had snatched Alice from Tiny Jim’s juke joint right out from under her daddy’s nose. Then he’d done his dirty deeds and got clean away.

Alice was still hanging around like some avenging angel. She’d warn you when something bad was about to happen. You’d hear the harmonica in Tiny Jim’s Blues and Barbecue all over town, the sound so mournful you’d feel defeated. The smell coming from his barbecue pits got so strong you’d close your curtains and stuff towels under the door to keep the scent from driving you crazy. And if you were caught out in the street like Billie, at the mercy of winds that suddenly shook the trees and rattled the trash cans in the alley, you’d feel as if you were made of glass. One look from a stranger could crack you in two.

Billie started running. Everybody knew the boogie man got bad little girls first.

She ran as hard as she could past Tiny Jim’s juke joint and barbecue place where Alice’s arms had the longest reach. The moaning notes of the harmonica poured so loud out the door she put her hands over her ears. It wasn’t any great surprise that when something awful was afoot, blues swarmed around his place like clouds of angry locusts. Tiny Jim was dead Alice’s daddy.

Billie pumped her long skinny legs into double time. With the blues breathing down her neck, she rounded the street corner so fast she nearly tripped on a crack. She flailed her arms to regain her balance, but something even worse was up ahead—Alice moaning in the cedar tree by A.M. Strange Library. When she took up residence in a tree, the birds hushed singing. They’d leave nests shaded from the sun and safe from predators to perch on power lines where anything in the air could swoop down and carry them off. Even the squirrels gave up their high-wire acts when Alice was near.

It was a wonder Alice would even come to the library, dead or not. Mean old Miz Rupert laid down so many rules, you might as well stick your fingers out so the librarian could slap them as you walked through the door. She even acted like she owned the books. Billie only went when her mama made her.