Summary

When Ida Mae and her family arrived in Chicago, there were more people scurrying around the streets than she could have ever imagined. The train station felt bigger than the small towns she’d known all her life. But when she was interviewed years later about that moment, Ida Mae said that Chicago looked just like heaven to her.

In just twenty-four hours, George Starling had left behind the citrus groves and the threat of lynching to arrive at Penn Station in America’s biggest and brightest city. Years later Pershing was to see purple mountains ahead of him as he drove west. For George Starling, the mountains that literally blocked out the sun were concrete and steel with the Empire State Building its tallest peak. He found his way to his aunt’s apartment in Harlem. Interviewed years later, he...