Novelist Ross Howell Jr. to appear at Asheboro library

Novelist Ross Howell Jr.

ASHEBORO – The execution of a 17-year-old African American girl in Virginia during the Jim Crow era forms the basis of Greensboro author Ross Howell Jr.’s fact-based novel Forsaken.

Howell will discuss his recently-published book during a Friends of the Library event at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 5, at the Asheboro Public Library. His talk is free and the public is invited.

Forsaken tells the chilling true story of Virginia Christian, an uneducated African American girl who was tried and convicted of murdering her white employer in 1912. Charlie Mears, a white man, covered the case as a rookie reporter.

The book chronicles the story of the trial and its aftermath as seen through Mears’s eyes, weaving in actual court records, letters and personal accounts.

Howell pursued a career in marketing and publishing after earning an M.F.A. in the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. His fiction has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly, Sewanee Review, Gettysburg Review and other publications.

He has taught creative writing and literature at Harvard University, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia and, currently, at Elon University.

The library is located at 201 Worth Street. For further information, call 336-318-6803.