A DARKNESS AT INGRAHAM'S CREST

by Frank Yerby ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 1979

A Tale of the Slaveholding South""--and Yerby's antebellum saga is deafening and prolonged (758 pages), with a slew of cruel or weak white folks balanced by one big black superhero: African slave Wes, son of a chief (see The Dahomean, 1971). Wes--a dazzling and diverting amalgam of John Henry, Mandrake the Magician, and Mary Worth--has stoically accepted the dictates of his Fa (Fate) in being punished by his enslavement to an inferior, strange, and cruel race; but he will not allow the whites to emasculate him as they did his fellow blacks, or to raise a hand against him. Purchased as a blacksmith, Wes doesn't get to do much smithing--he's busy skimming off the ruling scum all up and down a handful of plantations, and rescuing those he (inexplicably in some cases) loves. Among the latter is Pamela, near-divorced Yankee who now presides over Ingraham's Court (""You special, Miz Pam""). Miz Pam teaches Wes to read and sells his African tales to a Boston publisher. But Pam has hidden hots, and after being raped by a trashy white and then sleeping with a black stranger by mistake (in the dark she thinks it's Wes), she goes bananas, lays about with a whip, and becomes evil incarnate. Along the way, Wes rallies ancestral spirits (ghosts, levitations, evil spells); springs a pal from jail; sets fires; sends two mixed couples safely north; causes a suicide; and rehabilitates Miz Pam. And finally his work is done: ""I'm watchin' over y'all day and nights. When I'm gone. . . darkness over Ingraham's Crest."" A thunderous, cartoon melodrama; but some of Yerby's old fans may stick with it.

Pub Date: July 17, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1979

Categories: FICTION