Description:

**Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: A bitter young man searches for the truth about his father’s death and discovers the power of history in shaping our lives** Brilliant but troubled historian John Washington returns to his hometown of Chaneysville, Pennsylvania—just north of the Mason-Dixon Line—to learn more about the death of his father. Washington discovers that his father was researching a mystery of his own: why thirteen escaped slaves reached freedom in Chaneysville only to die there, for reasons forgotten or never known at all. A story of personal discovery and historical revelation, *The Chaneysville Incident* explores the power of our pasts. Based in part on actual events, this extraordinary novel won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award and placed David Bradley in the front ranks of contemporary American authors.