Helen M Martin

From the Dust of Death Helen M Martin

Publisher Marketing: From the Dust of Death is a historical novel based on many actual events that took place after the Civil War during the years of the Southern Convict Lease System. The reader will follow the struggle and survival of heroine Grace Lively, a Southern lady who finds herself enmeshed in the evil society of the Southern Convict Lease System. Grace fights to stay alive in the lucrative system of leasing hundreds of prisoners to companies for pennies a day, an unforgiving system that became the primary penal caretaker following the war. The prisons were unclean and housed both male and female prisoners. Children were born and had to endure, along with adults, extreme heat and cold, starvation, and cruel punishment, which often resulted in death. This story will capture the attention of both young and older readers as they follow the chronicles of the heroine's journey from the time period 1865 to 1877. The story moves from the rice fields of Atlanta to the cotton fields of Mississippi to the coal mines of Tennessee. The heroine is joined in the struggle by a Northern Union officer she met for a brief period during the war. Finding each other again, years later, their work together becomes a journey to abolish the cruel system.