![]() ![]() Alma Stone is an African-American maid in Greenville who knew Willie as a boy. Lee Trammell was one of the cab drivers who helped kill the black man he felt deserved to die, and yet he’s tormented about what happened. She writes that the trial dialogue is from real-life, as are the names of the judge and other participants, except her four fictional characters whose lives are changed by Earle’s murder. “I was shocked and fascinated by what had occurred in my hometown I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” Alden writes in the Author’s Note of her new novel, “The Empty Cell,” inspired by this tragic event. The white drivers were found not guilty.Īlthough Alden grew up in Greenville and lives there now, she knew nothing about what happened to Willie Earle until 2011, when she came upon “Opera in Greenville,” by the British author Rebecca West, whom The New Yorker sent to Greenville to cover the trial. They dragged the young black man from his jail cell, mutilated and killed him in retaliation for his alleged murder of another cabbie. Paulette Alden, who taught memoir and fiction writing at the University of Minnesota, was born in Greenville, N.C., in 1947, the same year the city was riveted by the trial of a mob of white cab drivers accused of killing Willie Earle. ![]() “The Empty Cell” by Paulette Alden (Radiator Press, $15) Plus news about some real hot ones coming out in the next few months. ![]() Two historical novels from different centuries and a hopeful look at politics are today’s good-to-read suggestions. ![]()
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