NEW MOON RISING

by Eugenia Price ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 1969

The second (The Beloved Invader--1965) novel in a prospective trilogy about St. Simeon's Island, Georgia, is independent of the first, based on the diary of one Horace Bunch Gould, and offers a hiatus from the modern world while keeping the South magnolia leaf-green. True one is jostled if not jarred by the ""peculiar coastal dialect"" spoken by the Negroes which however authentic (the author in her afterword) comes across like early Uncle Remus. The book takes place right about the time of Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia and leads through the Civil War. When first met, Mausa Horace has just come home from Yale but doesn't spend too much time there--with his father or his brother Jim (whose wife is ""skeered ob colored"" and snakes and guns) and his sister Mary and faithful Maum Larney. Horace wanders for seven years on a Mississippi river boat, comes back to marry Deborah, fifteen when first glimpsed under the oleanders, but she produces a clutch of children for her ""Mr. Gould, dear"" and they are all temporarily separated during the war. Not that Horace hadn't ""learned to think"" at Yale and so wasn't fully committed to the cause. . . . Well, obviously the bloom hasn't worn off this kind of peach since the first book (more religious in inflection) sold 100,000 copies and apparently ""Dey be plenty ob white folks""--older to be sure--around.

Pub Date: June 9, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION