Walterboro native writes debut murder mystery

When Walterboro native Caroline Cleveland penned her debut novel, When Cicadas Cry, she intended to write a novel about two legal cases separated by decades that are tied to one another, but her end result became something more impactful.

The novel tells the story of a Black man, Samuel Jenkins, accused of murdering a white woman when he is found at the scene of the crime. To make matters worse, the woman, Jessica Gadsden, comes from a well-to-do family in their small town of Walterboro.

When Jenkins’ grandfather, Elijah, calls upon a young and ambitious but slightly disgraced attorney, Zach Stander, the three mens’ stories converge as Stander fights to save Sam’s life and his career. As the story progresses, a 1980s cold case is woven into the present day.

The story harkens back to Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird or John Grisham’s A Time to Kill but with a modern twist.

Writing a legal thriller

Cleveland has a lot in common with these characters. She’s ten years younger than Elijah is noted to be, she has been an attorney for over 30 years and grew up in Walterboro.

The idea came to her a few years ago, and originally, it was supposed to be a plot about two legal matters that were inextricably linked.

Then the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal happened. Just before that, the murder of Walter Scott by police officer Michael Slager. As the world turned, so did the story that came out of Cleveland.

She didn’t set out to write a story that commented on racial injustice in the rural South or judicial system. While she weaved in memories of her childhood and a lifelong passion for law, the story she wrote seemed to become more profound, like it was more than just a fictional crime novel.

“I was trying to write a twisty murder mystery, and somewhere, my characters just thought that they had a little something more important to say, and so I went with it,” she said.

That’s not to say Cicadas will hit you over the head with a moral lesson: Having decades of legal knowledge, Cleveland presents issues without bias.

In fact, she tells a tale about the issues as someone who understands that these matters are dialectical in nature, and that the truth doesn’t have bias, because it is not muddled by opinion.
Cleveland has jotted down nearly 350-pages of exactly what she knows — and done it grippingly.

A murder in a small town

There are some places noted throughout the novel that exist in the small town of Walterboro, just west of Charleston, like Dairy-Land, which is the type of hamburger restaurant that could be found in any Small Town, U.S.A.

Cleveland doesn’t rely much on historic landmarks to conjure the familiar town, though. She took some creative topographical liberties but managed to illustrate it by the telling of small-town conversations juxtaposed with familiar swamps and beaches.

“I know what teenagers were doing. Not in the ’80s, but the ’70s, because I was there,” she said. “I was on that beach, having those parties, so I already knew what that would look like, which kind of helped me get the timespan in.”

Legal and Walterboro-centric knowledge aside, the novel presents the attitudes that accompany small-town America and how quickly favor can fall when you’re doubted.
It’s heavy stuff that manages to be engrossing without allowing the topics to run abase of their importance.

The book publishes in May, just as the cicadas re-emerge for Spring.