A Majority of One — Robert Lamb

When preachers in a rural Georgia town launch a campaign to ban selected novels from the high school curriculum and post the Ten Commandments in every classroom, only one person stands up to them: English teacher Anne Brady, an outsider from Atlanta who opposes censorship and champions the separation of Church and State. Refusing to go along to get along, she finds herself a social outcast locked in a battle to save her job and reputation. For help, she turns to another outsider, lawyer Eugene Shapiro, who as the county s only Jewish attorney knows all too well what his client is up against. By the time Anne s case spills into court from a heated school-board meeting, the mood of the county points toward a legal lynching or worse, as some of the more zealous defenders of the faith have drifted beyond the reach of law or reason. This novel is a powerful reminder that not all religious fanatics live in the Middle East. America has its own home-grown variety.