Boldfaced Lies

History logs insist that the American Civil War ended May 9, 1865. In explicit defiance, former Confederate military officers formed the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865.

In 1925, Denver, Colorado was firmly in the social, political and economic grip of the Klan's "invisible empire." The majority of Denver's elected officials, including its mayor, were members. Simultaneously, millions of African Americans were beginning new lives beyond the former slave states. Many were light skinned enough to "pass for white," and did so.

In Charlene Porter's Denver Post #1 best-selling novel, Boldfaced Lies, Margaret Brownethe wife of a ruthless and ambitious Denver Klan leader named Devinlearns that she is one-quarter Negro. As she spends her days shielding herself and her unborn child from Devin's whiskey-inflamed rages, she continues to search for the baby girl her father had forced her to give up as an unwed teen.

When Margaret...