Told in a series of firsthand accounts, from the Governor on down to the sister of one of the linchpins in encouraging the murderers, Troublefield is based on a true story, the double-lynching of two black men that occurred just behind the police station in Blacksburg, SC in 1912. Tracing the tensions that rose in the town between the white millworkers and the rising number of African Americans, Rivers paints a portrait of a town deeply invested in racism and a narrative to justify their fears and hatred; and a woman on the cusp of understanding her complicity in it all. Her novel asks, like Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound, whether it’s possible to see outside of your own perspective when you live in a town and a time governed by racism.