Retired judge Beverly A. Scarlett recounts her life in the small Southern town of Hillsborough, North Carolina—from Jim Crow, through the tumultuous years of school desegregation, to her successful judicial career. Scarlett digs deep into the town’s past and her family’s roots along the Eno River, and discovers the complicated place she calls home.

A lifelong resident of Hillsborough, Beverly A. Scarlett is a retired attorney and prosecutor. She served several terms as district court judge for Orange and Chatham Counties, the first African-American woman so elected. She now heads Indigenous Memories Incorporated, a nonprofit organization she founded to explore and preserve the land and memory of her ancestors, including their sacred burial grounds. Scarlett is a contributing author to Eno Publishers’s anthology 27 Views of Hillsborough: A Southern Town in Prose & Poetry.