"In The Louis Till File, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett's murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and a haunting intimacy to this devastating story. An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, The Louis Till File is completely original in its delivery--an engaging and enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons. Wideman turns seventy-five this year, and he brings the force of his substantial intellect and experience to this beautiful, stirring book, his first nonfiction in fifteen years,"--Baker & Taylor.

In 1955, Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi because he was a colored boy who had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. Wideman examines this death with that of Emmett's father, Louis Till, who was executed by the U.S. Army in 1945 in Italy, after being found guilty of murder and rape. The result is a conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons.