Book Talk: Lesa Shaul, Midnight Cry: A Shooting on Sand Mountain

The Snail on the Wall bookstore is pleased to welcome Lesa Carnes Shaul, professor of English at the University of West Alabama, whose new book delves into a true-crime story that happened on Sand Mountain in the 1950s.

The event will be at The Snail on the Wall bookstore. The event is free, but reservations are encouraged. Books will be available for purchase.

About Midnight Cry: A Shooting on Sand Mountain:
Lesa Shaul grew up atop Sand Mountain hearing stories about the event dubbed “The Marshall County Gun Battle.” On May 17, 1951, Aubrey Kilpatrick, a farmer and bootlegger, got into a dispute with sharecroppers living on his property that threatened to turn violent. Marshall County Sheriff Zeke Boyles was able to pacify the situation until the next day. But in the middle of the night, Sheriff Boyles changed his mind, and he, along with three other police officers, drove to the Kilpatrick family farm atop Sand Mountain. A few seconds later Aubrey Kilpatrick, Sheriff Boyles, and two other police officers lay dead or dying on the ground. Sixteen-year-old James Kilpatrick, the eldest of the Kilpatrick family’s eight children, stood on the porch with a rife smoldering in his hands. The central mystery of the case was who shot first and why. Was this an ambush, as the prosecution alleged? A case of lawless bootleggers determined to K*ll any trespassers? Or was this, as James Kilpatrick’s lawyers argued, a tragic case of mistaken identity, of self-defense, and of a traumatized boy defending what remained of his family from unidentified midnight attackers?

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