Melissa Fay Greene was a paralegal with Legal Services in McIntosh County, Georgia, when the events that make up her award-winning book Praying for Sheetrock (1991) took place. A recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a National Book Award finalist, Praying for Sheetrock is set in the early 1970s, when the struggle for civil rights that had been going on for years in other parts of the U.S. finally came to McIntosh County. Greene's next book, The Temple Bombing (1996) was the winner of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was also a National Book Award finalist. It concerns the 1958 bombing of the Temple, the oldest synagogue… in Atlanta.