Gone Too Long

Author/Guide: Lori Roy

Why a Booktrail?

2007, 2017: A story of one girl’s experience and links to the Klu Klux Klan

ISBN: 978-1524741969
Genre: Fiction

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What you need to know before your trail

On the day a black truck rattles past her house and a Klan flyer lands in her front yard, ten-year-old Beth disappears from her Simmonsville, Georgia home. Armed with skills sharpened while caring for an alcoholic mother, she must battle to survive the days and months ahead. Seven years later, Imogene Coulter is burying her father – a Klan leader she has spent her life distancing herself from – and trying to escape the memories his funeral evokes. But Imogene is forced to confront secrets long held by the town and her own family when, while clearing out her father’s apparent hideout on the day of his funeral, she finds a child. Young and alive, in an abandoned basement, and behind a door that only locks from the outside….

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Georgia and the KKK links

This is a novel which examines the history and past of the KKK and one woman’s experience of it from several angles. It’s an insight into the organisation itself but also of the people involved and the attacks carried out. The stories of those living in fear of this group…..

The cultural relevance and message of this book is that we must never forget how easy is it to ignore hate and to make allowances for people to spew their hate to everyone else. Hate can turn into something altogether more nasty very quickly. How would you feel if you were brought up in a family of hate? Or lived with this hate all around you?

Obviously the locations are fictional, but the hate and the history of the KKK are very sadly, tragically real.

Stone Mountain

The only real location in the novel as Sommersville does exist in SC but not in Georgia. Stone Mountain however, is very significant in the history of the KKK. It was once owned by the Venable Brothers and was the site of the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.

Stone Mountain Park opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years after Lincoln’s assassination. It is the most visited destination in the entire state of Georgia

Booktrailer Review

This is a heartbreaking read of a community held hostage by the Ku Klux Klan. A daughter of a klan member finds out something about his past and it’s even more horrifying that she could ever imagine.

This is the community where black vans drive around the streets dropping out leaflets advertising and recruiting for the KKK. Black vans of hatred. One woman in the book has seen her whole family swallowed up by this group, yet she has taken a different path. How far can you ever escape though and which group loyalty will claim you in the end?

Following a shocking (and I mean SHOCKING) revelation, the KKK descend on this family home. There’s the reputation of the clan leader to maintain after all. And now someone who has avoided this hatred now becomes embroiled in it.

Historical references to true life events make this all too real and raw. I’m not going to lie, there are some tough ‘scenes’ to witness and some harsh truths to swallow. But I think it’s an important read. Hatred and abuse in any form is wrong. Who ever you are, what ever you wear, look like, pray to, identify with etc…we’re all human at heart. One event in the book took place as recent as 2017. That made me think even more than I had done before.