It’s not every day that I receive a book like this in the post. This was sent to me by a friend. The author, Nora Neus, is her daughter.

I’m looking forward to reading this, and hope it’ll help me to understand what happened that August in 2017 when the Unite the Right rally came to Charlottesville. The voices apparently are those of witnesses and antiracist activists from across the communities who stood up for the world they believed in as the rally arrived.

The book is not long – a little over 200 pages, mainly composed of interviews, the majority of which Nora Neus carried out herself on the day after the riots. At the time she’d recently started a job in New York with CNN, but happened to be in the city of Charlottesville in Virginia, clearing out her apartment as the drama evolved. Charlottesville had been her home for years, and suddenly it was struggling to absorb the impact of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who’d brought their Unite the Right rally into the very core of the city. She was right there, understood the city’s rhythm, and tried to capture what happened.

It must have been a deeply unnerving time.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023