"It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man." Chapter 1, pg. 3

"Edmonds' father had deeded to his Negro first cousin and his heirs in perpetuity the house and the ten acres of land it sat in—an oblong of earth set forever in the middle of the two-thousand acre plantation like a postage stamp in the center of an envelope..." Chapter 1, pg. 8

"...so Lucas had beat him, stood straddled in front of the hearth and without even moving his clasped hands from behind his back had taken his own seventy cents and beat him with them and writhing with impotent fury he was already thinking of the man whom he had never seen but once and...