From the inside dust jacket:
"Mother of Pearl", Melinda Haynes's "remarkable first novel" (Chicago Tribune), was an unexpected sensation when it was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in 1999. It has now sold nearly a million copies in its cloth and paperback editions.

"Chalktown", Haynes's second novel, is written in the same devastingly beautiful language that has won her critical and popular acclaim. Returning to the country she knows so well - the backwoods South of the 1960s - Haynes tells the story of a mysterious town and its inhabitants, each with their own afflictions and joys, each with their own secrets.

In sparsely populated George County, Mississippi, along a quiet dirt road lined by sharecropper houses, lies Chalktown - a small village of folks who communicate mostly through the chalkboards set upi the front yards of their houses. Down the road lives the Sheehand family: sixteen-year-old Hezekiah, his older sister, Arena, his mentally disabled younger brother, Yellababy, and their disaffected and often cruel mother, Susan Blair, whose husband has abandoned both the house and the family. One day, with Yellababy strapped to his back, Hez sets out for Chalktown, determined to plumb its mysteries, or perhaps just to get away from his shabby home's oppressive atmosphere. And on the same spring day, the family he's left behind will confront a tragedy that at once erases Hez's bitter past and paves the way for a hopeful future.

Armed with a gothic and spiritual sensibility reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, Melinda Haynes weaves her characters' lives and stories into an unforgettable tapestry of sorrow and salvation that confirms her place as one of our country'a most exciting and consistently brilliant new writers.

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