BLOODLINE

by Ernest J. Gaines ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1968

Five fine short stories which offer more than momentary entertainment. ""A Long Day In November"" told in the voice of a tired-out six-year-old boy, is an amusing and touching account of how Sonny's cane-cutter father resorted at last to voodoo to win back Sonny's mother after a tiff. ""The Sky Is Gray"" makes your teeth ache in sympathy as an eight-year-old country boy and his proud mother walk the cold streets waiting for the white city dentist to get around to his Negro patients. ""Three Men"" takes you into a nineteen-year-old's cell where, after a long night, he acknowledges that if he lets his white plantation owner spring him, he'll be a slave. The title story is the most powerful, and (hopefully) forecasts a novel. Its central characters are Frank and Christian Laurent. Frank a white and dying plantation owner, Christian his messianic mulatto nephew-demented and daring enough to demand a birthright land inheritance from his bar sinister heritage. In ""Just Like A Tree,"" a series of characters describe the departure, by self-willed death, of Old Aunt Flo from the only home she ever knew-and it has the potential to be a powerful one act play. Gaines (Catherine Carmier, Of Love and Dust) has been acclaimed as a coming Negro novelist, but few novelists of any complexion can handle the short story form with such compelling ease.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1968

ISBN: 067978165X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1968

Categories: FICTION