Criminal Trespass (1985) by Helen Hudson

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Criminal Trespass (1985)

by Helen Hudson

Simms Quarter, Alabama

Alabama: 6/18

  Northern Alabama is the biggest geographic blank spot on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America map.  It doesn't have anything to do with a lack of potential titles- Huntsville, Alabama, the home of NASA is there, surely you could pick something that happened there.  Also, Muscle Shoals, home of a famous recording studio and well known "sound" has inspired at least a half dozen novels.  

  Criminal Trespass is that most suspect of categories, a book with a black protagonist written by a white woman.   I just read a book like this near the end of the Georgia chapter, Strange Fruit, by Lillian Smith.  However, Strange Fruit was published in 1944.  Criminal Trespass, on the other hand, was published in 1985.   It was also reviewed in the New York Times without a mention of the awkwardness of the author/protagonist relationship.  Not something that would be tolerated in 2025, a fact obviously known by editor Susan Straight, but here we are.  It's like the subject matter is extraordinary either, there are at least a dozen other books in this section of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project and another dozen in the last chapter.