Moorman's high school was integrated when he was in 11th grade. Across Mississippi and the South there were marches and riots. Although racial lines were beginning to blur, bigotry was prevalent. That bigotry extended not only to blacks, but also to poor white residents. The son of a former sharecropper, Moorman experienced firsthand the distinct divisions between the haves and have-nots.

"It was a time of fairly significant social upheaval, but also confusion and fear," Moorman recalls. "I lived through that."

Moorman uses his experiences as a starting point for "Coahoma Street," a novel set in 1967 in the fictional Mississippi delta town of Princeville.

Moorman, a business professor at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, is a prolific writer who has authored more than 50 publications, including three widely used college textbooks on entrepreneurship.

"Coahoma Street" is his first published effort at fiction, however.

Moorman says he enjoys writing fiction as a means of recreation. "Writing a novel, I think, is the purest form of escapism."

But in "Coahoma Street," there's an important tale to tell and an important perspective to share, he says. "For a long time I've needed to tell this story."

The novel is at once a romance and a mystery.

The main plot follows Jerry Sanger, the 18-year-old son of a white ex-sharecropper and a resident of the Coahoma Street neighborhood, one of the poorest areas in town.

Following his graduation from high school, Sanger takes a job at a local bottling plant. It's there that he first meets Eloisa Jones, the daughter of a black grocery store owner.

That encounter leads to another at the store and then a series of secret meetings. Their friendship soon develops into a romance, one strictly forbidden by the bigoted social structure in Princeville.

In that regard, "Coahoma Street" was described in one book review as "Mississippi's answer to West Side Story."

At the same time, though, the plot extends to a number of other characters. There are Sanger's friends -a group of boys known as the Coahoma Street Gang, although they aren't a gang in the traditional sense of the word.

In contrast, there are the privileged children of the affluent white residents of Princeville, including Jim Prince, the son of leading socialites Jackson and Beth Prince.

Even as Jerry Sanger and Eloisa Jones struggle to maintain their relationship and the Coahoma Street Gang clashes with Jim Prince and his country club gang, several other plots develop.

A member of the Coahoma Street Gang discovers an incestuous relationship that ends in death.

Beth Prince is found in her bed shot in the head with the pistol she kept in her nightstand, yet miraculously survives. Was it a botched suicide or attempted murder?

Moorman weaves all these storylines together as he brings "Coahoma Street" to a surprising climax and satisfying conclusion.

Through it all, though, the time and setting remain as integral a part of the story as the characters themselves. And that's the perspective Moorman wants to share.

While "Coahoma Street" isn't autobiographical, it does accurately depict what life was like growing up poor in Mississippi during the 1960s, Moorman says.

"The story's made up. But the history is true."

reprinted with permission from Life & Times Magazine (November 1, 2002)
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