Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Non-Fiction

Melissa Fay Greene

Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award and a New York Times Notable book, Praying for Sheetrock is the story of McIntosh County, a small, isolated, and lovely place on the flowery coast of Georgia--and a county where, in the 1970s, the white sheriff still wielded all the power, controlling everything and everybody. Somehow the sweeping changes of the civil rights movement managed to bypass McIntosh entirely. It took one uneducated, unemployed black man, Thurnell Alston, to challenge the sheriff and his courthouse gang--and to change the way of life in this community forever. "An inspiring and absorbing account of the struggle for human dignity and racial equality" (Coretta Scott King)

Race & EthnicityRace & Ethnicity · medium confidenceRace & Ethnicity61 signalsGoogle Books: Civil rights movements -> Race & EthnicityAward Category: Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize: Nonfiction -> Arts & CriticismKeyword Classifier: Business & Economics -> Business & EconomicsCivil Rights & Racial JusticeBlack History & CultureBusiness, Capitalism & CorporationsHousing, Cities & Urban Life
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Thurnell Alston82%
  2. 02 Central places

    • McIntosh County, Georgia78%
  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 70%.