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PROMISE MORNING by Charles Mercer

PROMISE MORNING

By

Pub Date: April 28th, 1966
Publisher: Putnam

A well observed story about rapine and violence in the Congolese newly independent territory of Bahai...The blacks are murdering the whites left and right, violating nuns and instituting land reform with rough justice. The blacks are like maddened children in adult bodies, while the fleeing Europeans and missionaries are caught up in their personal moral turmoil. The plot is divided between a set of black twins, one intent on revenging a white man's insult he has received while the other tries to help the white and his friends escape. Basically this is a pursuit story with a twist of regeneration, with the white man learning a new respect for the blacks and the black pursuer discovering humanity in the man he wants to kill. The conception is very simple while the outright butchery and torture is reminiscent of the African annals of the late Ruark. No better, and just as brutal.