Emmett Till took a train from his home in Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi; a few weeks later he returned home dead. Murdered because he was a colored boy and had, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till, chose to display her son's brutalized face in a glass-topped casket, "so the world can see what they did to my baby."
Emmett Till's murder and his mother's refusal to allow his story to be forgotten have become American legends. But one darkly significant twist in the Till legend is rarely mentioned: Louis Till, Emmett's father, Mamie's husband, a soldier during World War II, was executed in Italy for committing rape and murder.

Wideman, the author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, "is a master of quiet meditation...and his book is remarkable for its insight and power" (SFGate). An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is essential and "impressive" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) reading-an engaging, enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons.

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