God Bless the Child/a True Story of Child Abuse, Gambling, Southern Politics-And One Woman's Struggle Against the Odds Book

From the very beginning of his career as a writer, James Colbert has been praised for his lean, assured style and his unerring sense of plot and character. Now, with God Bless the Child, this acclaimed young novelist has turned his hand to nonfiction, producing a book as urgent as any headline, as raucous and bizarre as fiction. Sue Hathorn had worked with - and for - abused children for almost twenty years. A determined Mississippi Baptist, she dreamed of a special center for these children in the state capital, Jackson. But Sue had no money. Then she met Robert Malone, a professional gambler, whose nightly bingo games took in astronomical sums of money and who, under Mississippi law, needed to donate some of his proceeds to charity. Then the real game began - for no sooner did Robert give Sue a check for $6,000 than the Attorney General for the state raided Malone's Bingo Depot. In the face of common sense and local custom of several decades, the Attorney General charged that bingo was illegal, a violation of the state constitution. And so the stakes were raised - for Sue, for Robert, for the thousands of abused children in Mississippi (one such story is told here in wrenching detail). The outcome would prove crucial for them all. James Colbert's last novel, All I Have Is Blue, was described by novelist and noted child advocate Andrew Vachss as "social commentary with a surgeon's touch, wrapped in the narrative force of a pile driver. Strong, sweet and subtle." These qualities are shown to full measure in God Bless the Child, a vivid and timely book, a classic of its kind.