Excerpt from HATE CRIME

"On State Highway 63, I head east and crack open a window to smell something almost impossible to get a whiff of in Dallas -- winter's fresh air. On the horizon, the strawberry-hued sunset melts into a touch of banana and orange that is splashed onto a canvas of blue sky. I can hardly concentrate on directions, so strong is the desire to admire this beautiful evening sky that wraps itself around Jasper. From 63, there is a right turn off the main highway that places my car on a deceptively isolated farm-to-market road that is simply marked FM 1408. The road is wide enough for two lanes and two cars. I travel at a pretty good clip, around fifty-five miles an hour. It takes only a few blinks of the eye for the small city to completely disappear. Less than two miles later, I am on the infamous Huff Creek Road. The sky, so beautiful only seconds before, now seems a bad omen, a willing witness to unspeakable deeds. I question, out loud, what is left of my sanity. I continue down the unlit, one-lane road that leads to a tiny wood-planked bridge. Just to the left of the wobbly bridge is an old unmarked, heavily wooded logging road."


Joyce King with Jefferson County Sheriff Mitch Woods

"Texas born and Louisiana bred, Joyce King's heart and pen, like her loyalty, straddle both states. Perhaps that's why even as Hurricane Katrina continues to eclipse Hurricane Rita in the media and in the nation's memory, King swims determinedly against that tide. FORGOTTEN HURRICANE: Conversations With My Neighbors is testimony of her strong, sure stroke. Seven months on the road, King winds her way from Dallas to New Orleans just in time to face mixed emotions around the French Quarter Festival. En route, King retraces Rita's devastation and its extraordinary impact, then and now, on the lives of ordinary people. The resulting first-person accounts are compelling, enraging, redeeming.

Lacing her own hurricane size loss on the journey to the larger narrative, King ropes you to the spot where she is: deep in the hearts of her subjects. Maybe it is her familiarity with hurricanes -- she lists them like old friends -- that enables King to tune into her beleaguered neighbors' voices. How else to explain her perfectly pitched humor and irony under such traumatic circumstances?

Part journalism, part testimony, and part plain old testifying, Rita won't be forgotten anymore."
--Bernestine Singley

Bernestine Singley, former Texas and Massachusetts Assistant Attorneys General, is the author of the award-winning anthology, When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories.


Bestselling Author James Ellroy in Dallas with King

What He Said About HATE CRIME

"A heartbreaking story of stupid hatred and the endless ramifications of one cruel and vicious act. This book mocks fatuous notions of closure. Joyce King eloquently demands that we subsume bigotry with respect and love. Her argument is angry, righteous, and tender."
-- James Ellroy, author of My Dark Places and L.A. Confidential

Books by
Joyce King are available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon and other fine independent booksellers.