This week, Grace Elizabeth Hale will visit Columbus for a book talk on the heels of accepting the Book of the Year Award from the Mississippi Historical Society for her memoir “In the Pines: A Lynching, a Lie, a Reckoning.”

Hale’s appearance in the Friendly City is scheduled for 2 p.m. Feb. 24 at the Columbus Arts Council’s Omnova Theatre.

A professor of American studies and history at the University of Virginia, Hale explores her own family ties to Mississippi’s Piney Woods region and searches to understand what happened behind a racially motivated killing in “In the Pines,” her fourth book.

“In the Pines” has received praise from the likes of bestselling novelist John Grisham, “Just Mercy” author Bryan Stevenson and storied Mississippi folklorist William Ferris for bravely taking on a difficult subject: the implication of a beloved family member in an extrajudicial murder.

According to the Equal Justice Initiative, over 4,000 lynchings have been recorded in the South from 1877 to 1950, with the most in Mississippi.

This statistic, however, likely underrepresents the actual number of lynching victims because their deaths often went intentionally unreported.

Hale places her research in this context as she attempts to uncover a possible lynching close to home.

In 1947, while Hale’s grandfather Oury Berry served as the sheriff of Jefferson Davis County, Versie Johnson was shot before he could stand trial for allegedly raping a white woman. For years, the shooting was believed to be an accident, despite the unusual circumstances surrounding the incident.

Johnson, a Black man, had been removed from his jail cell and transported to a field, ostensibly to confess to what happened. Three white men, including Berry, were the only witnesses to Johnson’s final moments and claimed that Johnson tried to attack them, necessitating the use of force.

For Hale, the explanation did not add up. The process of piecing the whole story together would be painful and painstaking, but as Hale argues, necessary to reconcile with the truth.

W. Ralph Eubanks will join Hale in conversation at the “In the Pines” event. A native of the Piney Woods, Eubanks is the author of “A Place Like Mississippi” and currently a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

In addition to the Columbus Arts Council, sponsors of this event include the Mississippi State University Department of History and the Friendly City Books Community Connection, a special project of the CREATE Foundation. College and high school students will receive free copies of “In the Pines” furnished by the Friendly City Books Community Connection at the event while supplies last.