GO DOWN, MOSES and Other Stories

Seven short and long-short stories of the ramifications of a Mississippi family, from the legendary Buck and Buddy, to present day. They are backward thrusting family annals, — of the family, its slaves, lineal intermixtures; of deer and bear hunts; of stills; of gold and a divining machine; of the strange problems of miscegenation, as generation after generation feels its security in the blood links to the white family and insists or furtively demands recognition of the relationship. There is pain and torture and pity, as the white descendants piece out the puzzles of kinship; there's a mystic sense of identification with symbols; there's the brood shadow of the tragedy of racial mixtures. While there is occasional humor in the incidents, the whole emerges as a panorama of the interdependence of white and colored races. Broad in scope, often difficult reading, but absorbing as social documentation. Many of the stories have appeared in magazines.