Welcome to the website of Linda Williams Jackson
Author of critically acclaimed, Mississippi-based historical novels Midnight Without a Moon, A Sky Full of Stars, and The Lucky Ones (Common Sense Media Family Seal Selection 2022)
Southern by birth... a Southern writer by the grace of God, Linda is plum-picking proud to still call Mississippi home.
Browse the site to find out more about Linda, her books, her hometown, and her inspiration. While you're at it, feel free to click on a link to order a book or two.
Browse the site to find out more about Linda, her books, her hometown, and her inspiration. While you're at it, feel free to click on a link to order a book or two.
NEW BOOK ALERT!
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It’s 1967, and eleven-year-old Ellis Earl Brown has big dreams. He’s going to grow up to be a teacher or a lawyer—or maybe both—and live in a big brick house in town. There’ll always be enough food in the icebox, and his mama won’t have to run herself ragged looking for work as a maid in order to support Ellis Earl and his eight siblings and niece Vera. So Ellis Earl applies himself at school, soaking up the lessons that Mr. Foster teaches his class—particularly those about famous colored people like Mr. Thurgood Marshall and Miss Marian Wright—and borrowing books from his teacher’s bookshelf. When Mr. Foster presents him with a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ellis Earl is amazed to encounter a family that’s even worse off than his own—and is delighted by the Buckets’ very happy ending. But when Mama tells Ellis Earl that he might need to quit school to help support the family, he wonders if happy endings are only possible in storybooks. Around the historical touchstone of Robert Kennedy’s southern “poverty tour,” Linda Williams Jackson pulls from her own childhood in the Mississippi Delta to tell a detail-rich and poignant story with memorable characters, sure to resonate with readers who have ever felt constricted by their circumstances.
