A new novel by award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates revisits the 1980s Tawana Brawley rape allegations, and even includes a character modeled on the Rev. Al Sharpton.
"The Sacrifice" is scheduled for release later this month by Ecco Press.
In the book, a black 15-year-old girl named Sybilla Frye is found bound and smeared in dog feces in an old New Jersey factory. She has racial epithets written upside down on her body.
A powerful black minister, named the Rev. Marus Mudrick, appears with his twin brother, Byron, to take on Sybilla's case. A group of white police officers end up being blamed on the sexual and racial assault.
In the Brawley case, which took place in New York, the allegations were proved to be a hoax, though both Brawley and her family still maintain the then teenager was attacked.
In a
review of the book for National Public Radio, Alan Cheuse noted that all the characters in the book are treated sympathetically except for Mudrick.
The
New York Post quotes a passage from the book in which Sybilla is given a watch by boxer Mike Tyson. When she shows the watch to Rev. Mudrick, he responds that "Mike Tyson’s press agent hand I conferred on this issue, and it was agreed, if Tyson saw you, he would leave a 'donation' to the fund. And I will take that, now."
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