The year was 1931 and the dog days of summer yielded a steamy welcome to the residents of the newly founded town of Piney, in Forsyth County, Georgia. However, when farmer Beasley Taggart discovers the body of his 13-year-old daughter Emma Lee brutally killed and ditched in the backwoods of a deserted forest he is inconsolable. Beasley’s grief turns into anger when he sees Negro field hands working nearby and he is certain that Emma Lee was ravaged and killed by Negroes. The shock of a white child murdered by a Black man is reason enough for Beasley to incite the white citizens into action as they gathered to avenge little Emma Lee. By days end the bodies of three innocent Negro men hung like grisly tree ornaments from the branches of the town’s largest Oak. But Beasley’s vengeance was not fully satisfied and he incites even more violence against the Negroes when he leads the citizens to the edge of town where Negro families have settled. The citizens run rapid breaking into homes and dragging Negros from their beds. Negro men, women and children run for their lives into the surrounding trees. From there they watch as their homes are torched and burn all throughout the night. By morning the Negro survivors pick their way past the rubble. Beasley and his men order them to gather what’s left and leave the county by sunset that very day.

The town’s Men’s Association decide that sunset would be the official cutoff time for Negroes to work in the county. However, some members formed a vigilante group whose soul purpose was to catch Negroes in the county after sunset. Caught Negroes were shot or lynched and the bodies secretly buried in the Taggart cornfield. This conspiratorial practice went on for years with white citizens turning a blind eye to rumors and Negroes scurrying to get out before the sun went down.

They murdered to keep Negroes out, but what did they keep in?

Beverly Peace-Kayhill is a retired university administrator originally from Queens, New York who resides in Powder Springs, Georgia. She holds degrees from New York University and from Shorter College in Georgia. She is also a long time member of Toastmaster’s International. The Sunset Rule is her first novel.

Beverly’s favorite genre is historic horror legends as well as the supernatural.  Her research into the sundown laws that prevented Negroes from settling in southern towns was the incentive that led her to write her first novel. The Sunset Rule is the story of a Klan family who in 1965 still fights to hold true to their legacy of segregation. This is a family who over generations has committed inhumane acts against people of color.  However, the moral redemption they must face is far more frightening then they could ever realize.