How Socrates Bravo Got His Name

Book excerpt: "I grew up on a cotton farm in north-eastern Alabama where three generations of Jeffersons and Ashbys considered the land their own. I was young enough to believe that, although there was a wrinkled, paper deed to the farm in an old drawer somewhere, the fact that the Jeffersons were Negro and the Ashbys were white did not impact the entwining of our families or the yield of rows of cotton planted to the horizon. A day came, however, when the story of how I came to inherit the name of a Greek philosopher-who lived his life questioning others-pulled us out of the shadows of ignorance and into the harsh light of truth." Socrates Bravo Jefferson, a young Negro scholar in 1928 Alabama, dreads leaving his family to attend college preparatory school. Through a particularly arduous cotton season in which ownership of their farm hangs in the balance, Socrates's family struggles to keep their land, while a Farm Bureau agent, a depraved Northern outsider, and a drove of wild hogs threaten to destroy them, the farm's pickers, and the way they have lived for the last hundred years.Socrates despairs that all is lost. But, when a painful story from the farm's past brings the families together, the magic of baseball played under the lights, a plot of vibrant dahlias protected by parasols, and a loved one's calculated sacrifice all lead to new beginnings for the individuals in How Socrates Bravo Got His Name.