Witness (Karen Hesse novel)

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'Witness' is a fictional novel by Karen Hesse in 2001 based in 1924 Vermont were the Ku Klux Klan returns to America strong, and target a black girl of 12, Leonora Sutter, and a Jew, Esther Hersh. Many of the town are influenced to join the Klan including, Johnny, Merlin, and Harvey, and none find the easy way of their regretful dessicions.

Hesse tackled a more disturbing subject in her book Witness, racism. Here, the newly invigorated Klan of the 1920s tries to take over a small Vermont town. The book is written in poetic format from the perspectives of several people including Merlin Van Tornhout and Johnny Reeves, both members of the Ku Klux Klan, Sara Chickering, a farmer, Esther Hirsh, a six-year-old Jewish girl, Leonora Sutter, an African American girl, Iris Weaver, a resteraunt owner and beer runner, Harvey, who joins the Klan, and his wife Viola Pettibone, are shop owners, Reynard Alexander, a newspaper editor, Fitzgerald Flitt, the town doctor, and Percelle Johnson, the town constable. In Witness, Hesse continues the distinctive poetic style she pioneered in "Out of the Dust", a previosly written novel.