An exceptionally fine negro story -- written from the inside -- essentially human, pulsing with the rhythms of the race, filled with emotional value, colorful, dramatic, alive. John, a ""bright skin"", adored by his mother, hated and feared by his foster father, pursued by all the girls on the plantation to which he goes when he leaves home -- a full-blooded, highly strung, healthy animal -- is the central character. And his career, bringing joy and sorrow, pain and blessing, in his rise to fame as the greatest preacher of them all, and his fall from the pedestal, is epochal in the telling. Written by a negress, there is a note of authority -- but its ultimate value rests on its own merits as racial document and a good tale.