Hoosier Hysteria

Indiana University, September 1963. Meri Henriques, a nave freshman from New York, arrives on campus thinking shes about to enroll at an idyllic Midwestern college. Instead, she discovers a storm is brewing. An intriguing cast of characters inhabits Meris new and often troubled world: Katherine Pixie Gates, Meris charming and quirky roommate; Rachel, brilliant and sarcastic fellow New Yorker; Daniel, a tough radical with a tender heart; folk singer Derek Stone, Meris crush; and Shennandoah Waters, a white coed who only dates black men or exotic foreigners, much to her ultra-conservative parents horror. Over the course of Meris first year at college, tragedy strikes twice: John Kennedy is assassinated, and a young, black IU basketball player is castrated and thrown into a ditchmurdered for dating a white coed. And finally, that years commencement ceremonies bring an infamous symbol of white supremacy to campus, endangering anyone who dared to protestthrusting Meri into the middle of violent and escalating racial tensions. Vivid and compelling, Hoosier Hysteria is a timely story of prejudice and political unrest that, today more than ever before, must be told.