Jan Lee reads a scorching novel by a former Oxford resident who has returned to her roots

Vanessa Lafaye’s uplifting, shocking debut novel Summertime comes as the Alabama town of Selma remembers its Bloody Sunday — March 8, 1965, when state troopers charged 600 black non-violent protesters denied the vote.

Further marches followed, led by Martin Luther King, culminating in his assassination in 1968. The recently released film Selma, based on these events, was premiered, coincidentally, on the weekend when a protest march took place in response to the deaths of two unarmed black men by police in Ferguson. So the struggle continues.

Lafaye has lived for 30 years in the UK, where she has worked for OUP and Blackwell’s Bookshop, but she grew up in Florida.

Here she recently found out how black American soldiers returning from the First World War were sent to inhumane camps in Florida Keys to work on a dangerous construction project. Caught in the Labour Day Hurricane of 1935, the most powerful and devastating storm in American history, the veterans were abandoned by their government, which left them to perish Her characters are fictionalised, but the events in this novel ring true. Part history, part thriller and part love story, Summertime draws the reader into the world of Missy and Henry as they grow up together.

Missy works for the Kincaids, a rich white couple, and cares for their little son. The war veteran Henry, traumatised by the fighting in France where “soldiers harvest body parts instead of cotton”, tries to remake his life. It is the eve of the annual July 4 beach barbecue when black and white residents mix. Henry is anxious that his men should behave with dignity. In this highly charged atmosphere Hilda Kincaid is found cruelly beaten. Sheriff Dwayne, who is sure Henry is the father of his mixed-race son, needs to pin the beating on him and “bring him to justice” — while trying to cling to his belief that black people are “just like you or me, they have rights”.

The characters are deeply felt. Missy and Henry cling to their love. Despite the destructive hurricane, the cruelty of racial segregation and their “wrecked hopes and shattered lives” their innate goodness and steadfastness shine through.

Summertime
Vanessa Lafaye
Orion. Hardback, £12.99