I’m hoping HarperCollins has Devil in the Grove priced correctly after seeing that Willis McCall’s autobiography can be purchased on Ebay for just $800. I have my own copy (not for sale!) and it has some terrific photographs, some great quotes, and it’s evidence that Sheriff McCall was a voracious scrapbooker.  McCall was known to have clipped and saved anything with his name on it, and the book was a valuable source while I was doing research.  I can’t vouch for McCall’s accuracy, though.  He definitely got a few things wrong in his autobiography.  Like the part where he says he was firing at the Groveland Boys in self-defense.  And the parts where he glosses over his role in the Groveland Riots, and the forced confessions obtained through beatings and torture. 

But Sheriff McCall more than makes up for these glaring errors by answering his critics, as he does on page 14, who charged that he had such disdain for blacks, he segregated his jail by race as late as the 1970s. “I’ll tell you, I knew a few dirty whites that I wouldn’t want to put a self-respecting Negro in a cell with.” 

For just $800, this book can be yours, signed by the “Big Hat Man” himself.