Chapter One

A royal-red Ford F-150 SuperCrew rolled through the streets of Albany, Georgia. The pickup’s driver brimmed with optimism, so much that he couldn’t possibly foresee the battles about to hit his hometown.

Life here is going to be good, thirty-seven-year-old Nathan Hayes told himself. After eight years in Atlanta, Nathan had come home to Albany, three hours south, with his wife and three children. New job. New house. New start. Even a new truck.

Sleeves rolled up and windows rolled down, Nathan enjoyed the south Georgia sunshine. He pulled into a service station in west Albany, a remodeled version of the very one he’d stopped at twenty years earlier after getting his driver’s license. He’d been nervous. Wasn’t his part of town—mostly white folks, and in those days he didn’t know many. But gas had been cheap and the drive beautiful.