The Ballot & the Bone

In Reconstruction-era Alabama, a vote can cost more than pride—it can cost a body.Adelaide “Addie” Freeman teaches children to read in a one-room schoolhouse outside Eufaula. When Election Day violence erupts and her younger brother vanishes in the chaos, Addie refuses the county’s quiet advice to “let it settle.” Something else is happening beneath the official headlines—an economy of intimidation disguised as paperwork, debts written to never be paid, and names that can be erased with a signature.Thomas “Tom” Garner, a Montgomery newspaperman, sees the story being edited into harmlessness. When he finds a torn account page in a ditch—ink-smudged, coded, and wrong—he realizes truth is being hidden in plain sight, protected by respectable men and respectable books.As Alabama’s political ground shifts and protections recede, Addie and Tom chase proof through back rooms, print shops, and church basements where lessons are taught like secrets. But the closer they get to the ledger’s true meaning, the more the system tightens—quietly, legally, and without mercy.A sweeping, tense historical novel of courage and survival, The Ballot & the Bone follows two people who refuse to live small in a world determined to make them disappear.