It was announced this week that Erskine Clarke’s Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, a narrative history of four generations of a plantation’s inhabitants–white and black–in Liberty County, Georgia, from 1805 to 1869, is among this year’s winners of the prestigious Bancroft Prize. The Bancroft Prize, established in 1948, is awarded annually by Columbia University to authors of distinguished works in American history or diplomacy.

Read the first chapter of Dwelling Place (pdf document).