Sheriff McCurtain has a problem. It appears that a negro boy has been accused of raping a white gal. White folk in Flowery Branch can't allow that to happen and so a lynch mob forms. In times of crisis such as this the sheriff does what is politically correct; he goes fishing. This time McCurtain finds himself the fish on the hook who just can't get away no matter how hard he tries.

In this masterful piece of literature, Erskine Caldwell unravels before our eyes the pathology and terrorism of lynching in the south. No one could do a better job for Caldwell is a white southerner who grew up in an environment in which lynching was a common form of entertainment. Trouble in July goes deep into the psychology of what makes common white men into brutes and those who work for them into victims.

Like many men McCurtain finds it easier to ignore what is going on rather than try to contain the trouble. The more that he tries to wash his hands of the affair the worse it gets. Those in power see the political and economical ramifications of the act and call on him to jail the accused. After all,McCurtain is their political puppet to be manipulated at will.

Such an intriguing drama exposes the hypocrasy of the law and shows how fear can make even the most honest of men betray their basic values of justice. Fear reduces the "negro" community into one that becomes terrorized and beaten into submission. Fear allows the upholder of the law to allow things to get out of hand merely because he wants to be voted into office next year.

Although the characters are simple; their motives, thoughts and values are complex as they struggle with their consciences in carrying out their heinous acts of cowardliness. You have laid out before you the ugliness of a system that dehumanizes everyone involved. The foreward by Bryant Simon in this edition gives us the background which gave rise to this novel. According to Simon, the author has made a significant transition in his work by revealing the south's racism in a straightforward manner. He doesn't hold back the punches.

Caldwell has given us a masterpiece about American Terrorism at its zenith in the United States. You will be repulsed, angered, and yes, fearful as you follow the crowd. Our author won't let us become mere voyeurs. We become the lynch mob, the negroes, the soiled politicians and all that is sick in southern terrorism. Read this outstanding work, feel the terror and learn about overcoming the mob psychology in your life. I was deeply moved by Trouble In July and you will too.

Hatred, bigotry, lust, lynchings and mayhem all take place in the ole south. After reading trouble in July I ran out and bought "A PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE", here again Caldwell displays just how good his writing & story telling skills are. I read "TROUBLE IN JULY ABOUT 13 YRS. AGO. The book was lent to a friend and never returned. I was delighted when I saw that the book had been reprinted, I plan on purchasing another copy. This book has stayed on my mind for years. I wish Caldwell was still alive so he could write more of these novels with stories from the land of dixie. Trouble in july will move you and bring you close to tears, trust me and keep a hankie close at hand.

one of the best books written about the ole south filled with bigory, passion, rape, hatred, i lent this book to a friend about 10 yrs. ago have been trying to get a new copy since then. erskine caldwell is at his best. don't miss this one

Erskine Caldwell's sharp prose has captured the brutal culture of the south during the stark days of the depression. Readers were brutally shocked as they confronted the spiritual and psychological poverty of Caldwell's characters. In this collection of short stories Caldwell tackles the the complex relationships of Blacks and Whites in segregated America.

This collection was selected by Ray McIver, a Black man, who as a student became captivated by Caldwell's stories. Caldwell's honesty as a white southerner in dealing with racial relationships lead to both men becoming friends and working together to present these stories from varied magazines in which Caldwell was published.

The Black and White Stories of Erskine Caldwell shows the brutality of white men against Blacks in the rural south. The book is divided into four sections dealing with the themes of lynching, sexual exploitation, sadism and flim flamming. Caldwell's characters will shock you with their hate, cowardice and ignorance. You will come across characters who have to walk a thin line in the racial divide in order to survive. You are hit home with the raw emotions of Blacks and Whites who are locked in a never ending battle of wills.

This book is not a social commentary. It presents the stories in a straight forward manner that doesn't call for any apologies. Some of the stories will make you laugh and others will make you cry. Some will make you feel sick to your stomach and still others will fill you with riotous laughter. Caldwell hits his readers will a wide pallet of emotions as you attempt to make sense out of a chaotic world now gone.

One of the 200 Most Important Confederate Books for the Reader, Researcher and Collector. Richard Barksdale Harwell Author of In Tall Cotton As listed in In Tall Cotton: [This is] a fictional treatment of Harris' early teen-age years as printer's devil for The Countryman, a remarkable country paper roughly modeled after The Spectator that was published during the war years by Joseph Addison Turner at Turnwold Plantation near Eatonton, Georgia. Harris dedicated On the Plantation to Turner and says in an "Introductory Note": "Some of my friends who have read in serial form the chronicles that follow profess to find in them something more than an autobiographical touch. Be it so. It would indeed be difficult to invest the commonplace character of Joe Maxwell [i.e., Harris] with the vitality that belongs to fiction. Nevertheless, the lad himself, and the events which are herein described, seem to have been born of a dream. That which is fiction pure and simple in these pages bears to me a stamp of truth, and that which is true reads like a clumsy invention. In this matter it is not for me to prompt the reader. He must sift the fact from the fiction and label it to suit himself."

Caldwell's stories are very sharp, concise and pointed. No word is wasted in his deceptively simple way of adressing Southern life in America. This anthology of short stories makes it pretty obvious that Caldwell ought to be read for years to come. Far more than a vulgar comedian; he is one of the very few writers that really manage to satirize the crudest, meanest, lowliest people you ever saw, and still come across as a story-teller who loves his characters.

In the thirties critics acclaimed Erskine Caldwell as one of the most influential writers of his time. His books sold in the millions and his play, Tobacco Road (based on the novel), had an unprecedented record run across the nation. By the time the sixties emerged, Caldwell falls into obscurity, disdained by the critics and forgotten in the canon of southern literature.

Caldwell's Icarus-like rise to fame and descent into obscurity is the catalyst which inspired Dan Miller to explore one of the south's most prolific writers. What was behind the man who was so passionate in his work yet ended up destroying his professional career, his marriages and his relationships with his children.

The Journey from Tobacco Road takes a microscopic look at the forces which shaped and made Caldwell the writer that he is. Born of educated parents who were members of a fundamentalist presbyterian sect, we find a man full of contradictions. His parents had formal education. Their son never graduated from high school (or any school for that matter) and was a poor writer and reader. Their denomination, The Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church, was highly fundamental yet Caldwell's father had a great passion to confront the injustice of poor and Black people. His passion was transferred over to his son who became the extentsion of his cause for justice.

You will come across layers of complexities of Erskine who was controlling in all of his relationships with his wives and daughters. His obsessive need for control extended itself into the lives of his children to the point of abuse. Yet despite these tendancies Caldwell reached the hearts and minds of his readers in his depiction of the southern poor.

Miller has given the reader a revealing portrait of a man who was at the top of his literary popularity only to fall in obscurity. We are shown the elements of why this happened and can see that the same trap is set for writers who become popular but are spurned by the academic literary community. Caldwell's journey is an interesting one as he goes through the school of hard knocks only to rise a winner. Miller's biography is clear and concise. He doesn't put Caldwell on a pedestle but he reminds us this is an author who shouldn't be ignored. You will enjoy this biography.

Miller's concern about Caldwell's obscurity is not to be ignored. Recently I sat on a class in southern literature. When I read the syllabus, I saw the conspicuous absence of Caldwell's name. On approaching the teacher, I asked why and she immediately became embarassed and said she that Caldwell's name had mistakenly been dropped while editing the syllabus. Miller's book is certainly one we need to remind us of the life and contributions of this man of southern literature.

Dr. Miller tells the interesting truth behind one of the best selling authors of all time. Caldwell's life growing up poor in the deep south set the tone for what his work will become in the upcoming years. Miller, a student of David Donald (2 time pulitzer prize winner, "Look Homeward Angel:Bio of Thomas Wolfe", and official Lincoln biographer) at Harvard University, gives the reader a complete picture of an author who has been forgotten in time. Caldwell's gritty, often pornographic style has been belittled by todays critics, but Miller shows Caldwell was more than a pulp writer, he was a complex man, with a simple style. A must read.

In Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell tells the humorous yet incredibly detestable tale of an extremely poor southern family during the Great Depression. Their amazingly ignorant, destructive, and immoral behavior is almost painful to read about at times but is somehow strangely amusing.

The story begins with Jeeter Lester stealing a sack of turnips from his son-in-law who has walked all day to buy them. After hearing the description of the family's living conditions, however, the reader almost feels he is justified in taking them to feed his starving children, wife, and mother. Any sympathy quickly vanishes when Jeeter runs off into the woods to stuff himself with turnips before he returns to give the little that is left to his family. It should come as no surprise that nearly all of his children ran away from home as soon as they could and never return home to visit. One of his two children that is still at home when the book begins is Dude, Jeeter's sixteen-year-old son. Soon Dude gets married to a traveling preacher woman named Bessie who was born without a nose. Bessie lures Dude into the marriage with the promise of a new car for Dude despite the fact that they are twenty-five years apart in age. After running over and killing a black man, an event which does not bother any of the Lesters, and other such calamities, the car is quickly rendered into a piece of junk by the destructive hands of Dude and Jeeter. When Bessie complains about their rough treatment of the car, Jeeter kicks her off his land and starts hitting her with sticks. In her rush to get away, Bessie runs over Jeeter's mother, but she does not even stop to see if she is alright. The amazing thing is that Jeeter does not go check on her either, and his mother suffers a slow, agonizing death as she attempts to crawl to the house.

The characters in the book are not developed much beyond the fact that they are incredibly ignorant and immoral, but the reader gets the impression that that is because there is really not much more to the Lester family than those qualities. Any potential redeeming qualities are quickly obscured by a flood of more and more horrendous characteristics. An example of this is Jeeter's love of the land, which could be seen as a positive attribute. Quickly, however, the reader realizes that this love of the land is the root of the Lesters' poverty, because Jeeter cannot afford seeds to plant but will not leave the land to work in the city. This also serves to display the theme of the book which is man's often irrational refusal to accept changes in life.

The style of the book, although plain, contains very well written dialog and the setting is excellently portrayed as well. If there is one problem in the book, it is the extremity to which the depravity of the characters is taken. This can make it nearly impossible to relate to or sympathize with the characters in any way. Although this can detract slightly from the story, overall the book was very entertaining.

Tobacco Road documents the last days in the lives of Jeeter and Ada Lester, poverty-stricken and permanently befuddled sharecroppers living in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. Both a comedy and a tragedy, the book, almost a folk carnival of sorts, is hilarious and strangely uplifting from beginning to end. The tragic element, barely discernable but slowly advancing throughout the course of the book, strikes sharply and rapidly at the characters and the reader in quick lunges before vanishing again beneath the brilliant comic surface.

The novel has a archetypal framework: Patriarch Jeeter, dispossessed of his ancestral land, upon which nothing will now grow but broom sedge and scrub oak, perpetually dreams of bringing his dead and depleted soil to new life. While musing on his farm's infertility and future, and when not lusting after the women around him, Jeeter--father of twelve--is simultaneously preoccupied with ending his own ability to reproduce via self-castration. Like the Hanged Man of the Tarot, habitually procrastinating Jeeter is continually hamstrung and locked in the stupefying moment.

Caldwell is particularly cruel in drawing his female characters: simple-minded and otherwise beautiful daughter Ellie May has a disfiguring harelip; man-crazy, self-appointed preacher Bessie has a good figure but no nose (the other characters are fascinated with trying to see how far down her open-holed nostrils they can peer), the unnamed, silent grandmother is starved out by the other family members who will no longer acknowledge her; struggling, hungry and forward-looking wife Ada, who has not always been faithful, dreams only of having a dress of correct length and current style to be buried in; and twelve year-old child bride Pearl has lost the will to speak and sleeps on a pallet on the floor to avoid her adult husband's sexual advances. In contrast, Jeeter and handsome teenage son Dude are merely imbecilic, gullible, and grossly but unknowingly selfish.

All of the characters are God-fearing and largely well-intentioned towards one another, though uneducated and of extremely limited consciousness. Therefore, they are guiltless of malice if not of responsibility. In a scene which may offend some of today's readers, newlyweds Dude and Bessie accidently kill a black man and think nothing of it. But this blank, spontaneous indifference to reality and the reality of other people is what makes the book funny. The ancient grandmother meets a painful and grueling death through another careless accident with the car; Jeeter rudely discusses Ellie May's disfigurement with her without the slightest awareness of her emotional reaction; Bessie, perpetually in heat, nearly rapes unwilling, unresponsive, 16 year-old Dude; car salesmen gather to stare down Bessie's nostril holes and insult her; Jeeter attacks his son-in-law and steals the bag of turnips he walked has seven miles to buy; Ellie May masturbates openly in the front yard; the whole family gathers, tribe-like, to watch Dude and Bessie make awkward love on their wedding day; then communally destroy a new (and totem-like symbol of the modern, productive, urbanized world they will never be a part of) automobile within a few days due to recklessness and the family curse of being unable to respect and maintain anything.

Like many of the characters in Muriel Spark's novels, the cast of Tobacco Road are only vaguely aware, if aware at all, of themselves as moral, spiritual or ethical beings, despite the flimsy religious trappings around them. This lack of moral awareness "and the comedy that arises from it" is what fuels Tobacco Road. Caldwell has written the lightest of black comedies, and it is to his credit that he is capable of making the reader embrace and enjoy these occasionally vigorous lost souls, even as the reader senses there will be only grief ahead for all.

The universal success of Tobacco Road in 1932 (the novel was made into a long-running Broadway play, and a toned-down John Ford film) gave new, 20th-Century life to the country bumpkin genre, which in turn gave birth to the Ma And Pa Kettle films, the Li'l Abner comic strip, some of Tennessee William's short stories and plays, and classic American television series the Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres and Petticoat Junction.

Despite the many ways in which sexual intentions go awry in the book, it has a natural, healthy approach to sexuality, as did Caldwell's next novel, God's Little Acre. In our age of political correctness and sexual lockdown, the book's vibrant, sexuality-as-a-given attitude is stirring.

Some Southerners, at the time of its publication and continuing through to the present, have objected to the book as an indictment of Southern culture and an insult to its people. This charge is groundless, as the book is clearly a soulful high comedy, and its characters strictly caricatures, which could easily be converted into present-day, inner-city poor, Californian migrant workers, Alaskan trappers, or a suburban blue-collar family with the same results, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age. Ultimately, Tobacco Road is a novel which seductively illuminates and instructs while it seamlessly entertains.

Hats off to the University of Georgia Press for courageously rescuing Caldwell from oblivion, understanding his work in context, and bringing the best of his work to the public in these handsome volumes.

Written during the depression era, this southern classic uncovers the ugly side of southern culture steeped in poverty. Come along on Tobacco Road and view Jeeter Lester and his dysfunctional family. Jeeter, the patriarch of this poor excuse of humanity brings out the worst qualities that a man can possess. His ignorance, selfishness and stupidity are magnified to the highest degrees as he attempts to survive in a world that has long gone.

Erskine Caldwell has introduced us to a life of absurdity in the backwoods of the south. His characters are stereotypical charactures of poor southern whites. Some of them are grotesque in their appearance, greedy, selfish and totally shiftless. As much as you would want to sympathize with them, you can't. They are people who won't take responsibility for themselves and will put the blame on others. Jeeter and his son Dude are great examples of this mentality.

How then can this book be so good if it describes people so bad? In telling the story of Tobacco Road, we see another side of southern culture exposed. It is not pretty, genteel or noble. You see the ugly for what it is and affirm that this too is a part of life when people are reduced to extreme poverty. There is also humor in the story. The characters are not totally one dimensional but their naivite draws you to tears of laughter and maybe sorrow. Look into this world of southern culture where people cling to dreams long dead and allow themselves to remain stagnate on Tobacco Road. This is an excellent southern classic of a people long forgotten.

Readers who were struck by the bleakness and power of Caldwell's Tobacco Road will find something very different in these almost homey, amusing reminiscences of a seriously dysfunctional Southern family. The book is structured as a series of self-sufficient vignettes, detailing separate incidents in the everyday lives of these very everyday people in the early 20th century. The father, Morris Stroup, is lazy, thoughtless, possibly a womanizer (only the Grass Widow knows for sure), certainly a thief, frequently a drunk, and willing to turn his hand to anything except honest work. The mother, Martha, is appropriately harried, cantankerous, demanding, and dictatorial. She takes in wash to help make ends meet, but she bitterly resents the fact that she has to do so much hard work (that she considers beneath her) just to make up for her husband's shortcomings. So what's a boy to do, but just try to stay out of the way?

The stories are told from the viewpoint of young William, but he is rarely more than an observer. Handsome Brown, the 'Negro yardboy', gets stuck doing the really dirty work, and gets pretty short shrift from both grownups, although he and William are great pals. He bears the brunt of most of the book's physical humor, and some enterprising student could probably write a good paper about racism (or just plain southern stereotypes) using this book. Despite the nostalgic, Wonder Years viewpoint, there's an undercurrent of pain and frustration that makes us sympathize with these characters even when we see them behaving pretty badly, as when Pa comes home drunk and starts breaking the furniture, or Ma's endlessly distressing over what the neighbors will think. Caldwell's picturesque prose paints some hilarious pictures - the goats on the roof, and the attack of the shirt-tail woodpeckers stick in the mind - but the actual belly-laughs are few and far between, and too often the characters come off as more pathetic than lovable. As a result, the pleasure one might derive from these slapstick antics is tempered by the misery and poverty that these luckless people seem doomed to live in. Fans of southern literature will find this book fairly light reading, however, since many American authors (Faulkner, Twain, Harper Lee, etc...) have dealt with the foibles, follies, pain and pathos of these kinds of characters far more effectively.

This book is a novel / short story collection. The book involves a poor Georgia family: an ignorant but pleasure seeking husband, his nagging, hard-working wife, their young teen-age son, and their black workman ( who is treated as a thankless slave ).

Each chapter in the book, is not related to the previous, but are simply episodes of humor in ignorance. Their father's money making schemes are a stitch. Their are also some sobering stories as well, but mostly it is a funny book. I found myself really attached to the family at the end and enjoyed the book quite a bit. It is typical Caldwell writing here.

Equal parts burlesque, farce, and tall tale, Erskine Caldwell's interrelated short story collection Georgia Boy (1943) finds its author near the peak of his writing talent. The fourteen stories are narrated by young William Stroup, the observant only child of a poor Georgia family. While the endless string of shenanigans William reports clearly demonstrate his father Morris' stupidity, sloth, and immorality, objective William never offers an opinion on his father's behavior. As the stories progress, it becomes clear that while he mildly sympathizes with his hardworking, frustrated, and put - upon mother, William actually admires his father's outrageous breaches of acceptable behavior.

Like Jeeter Lester of Tobacco Road (1931) and Ty Ty Walden of God's Little Acre (1933) before him, Morris Stroup is a daydreamer constantly on the lookout for pie in the sky and any shortcut to prosperity, no matter how absurd, outlandish, or illegal. In fact, the Stroups stand somewhere between the Lesters and the Waldens in terms of socialization; while they are not as backward, uneducated, and dispossessed as the poorest - of - the - poor - Lesters, the Stroups lack the Walden's daring - do, ingenuity, marginal prosperity, and relatively strong interrelationships. Like the Lesters, the Stroups live in a house divided: since the extraverted Morris is constantly misbehaving on a grand scale, William's mother ("Ma") finds it necessary to constantly be on her guard against her husband's latest transgression. One of the book's hilarious running jokes is Ma telling William to "go in the house right this instant and shut the doors and pull down the window shades" so she can confront Morris alone with his latest deception, chase him with a broom, or throw any object available in his general direction. Like most men and teenage boys in Caldwell's fiction, Morris thinks with his reproductive organs first and his stomach second, his mind a distant third.

When Ma is not suffering due to Morris's behavior, Handsome Brown, the black "yard boy," is. Handsome lives in a shed on the Morris property and receives only food and occasional secondhand clothing for his work. The much - harassed Handsome, however, shows far more common and moral sense than any other character in the book. Handsome, who has a slight lazy streak of his own, also does most of the work around the house, while Morris "hasn't done an honest day's work in ten years." While Morris is clearly a fool in every sense, Handsome is only a fool in Morris's ignorant opinion: Morris unquestioningly considers Handsome a lesser being strictly on the basis of his race.

But Morris is an archetypal fool extraordinaire, ridiculously bringing one avoidable disaster after another upon his head. A pure fool, Morris is incapable of learning from his mistakes or perceiving his own culpability, lacks foresight entirely, and regardless of the outcome of his actions, still manages to have a high opinion of himself as a hail - fellow - what - met, kind, light - hearted individual. The stories of Georgia Boy abound with loaded, riotous situations, most of which, though not all, have been precipitated by Morris.

As in his other fiction, Caldwell excels at characterization, even while his men, women, and children tend to run to type. Caldwell had a genius for comedy that stretches the boundaries of probability without ever going too far. Like a fourteen - story illustration of F. Scott Fitzgerald's statement that "there's no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind," Georgia Boy is a warm, touching, and uproarious examination of the large and small foibles of man.

Written with difficulty and poorly received by critics upon release in 1938, Journeyman directly followed Caldwell's two successful masterpieces, Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre. While less overtly funny than Tobacco Road and less touching than God's Little Acre, Journeyman remains a small, tightly controlled masterpiece well in keeping with its more famous predecessors, and is no more shocking than either.

A stranger arrives in the hot, sleepy, Georgia agricultural community of Rocky Comfort, driving up to Clay Horey's farm in a dying automobile, the sound of grinding gears and a cloud of billowing black smoke announcing his arrival. Clay, as easily molded and manipulated as his name suggests, isn't sure whether he sees a man emerging from the car or not, and briefly believes he's hallucinating. Buzzards are "soaring motionless overhead," and bluejays sweep from the woods in a flurry "as if they've discovered a snake in a tree." For a moment, the natural laws of the physical world have been suspended and oddly skewed. Clay's visitor is preacher Semon Dye (Semon / Die = Life / Death?), an apparently down on his luck wayfarer in dirty black clothing and a face charred brown from the smoke. Through the use of blatant but extremely effective and smartly executed symbolism, Caldwell makes it quite clear what sort of spiritual being Semon Dye is. He tells Clay he "feels horny," and intimidates Clay into action by jabbing at him repeatedly with a pitchfork. Readers will quickly notice that Semon is the prototype of Harry Powell, the preacher played by Robert Mitchum in the 1955 film Night Of The Hunter.

Semon, "about 50" and nothing less than 6 feet 8 inches tall, is also a magnetically sexual predator and personality, using his continuously evident "huge stiff thumb" to stab Clay between the ribs (a metaphorical act of 'sticking it to him,' as he soon will), and attracting women "like flocks of sheep." "He's the potentest thing," says 15 year old child bride Dene more than once, to Clay's chagrin. Semon sets about seducing everyone he meets literally or figuratively, quietly taking over gullible, torpid Clay's farm and life one piece at a time. Even when one male character says he'd "like to blow Semon's brains out," he also admits momentarily that he misses Dye's presence and being "tickled" by both his big stiff thumb and company. One woman, though just violently pistol whipped into unconsciousness by the preacher, nonetheless agrees to travel with him the following week.

But Rocky Comfort is already in a fallen state before Semon arrives. The only local church has been converted into a guano shed; Clay is married to current wife and teenager Dene, but hasn't divorced his previous and fourth wife, Lorene Horey, who appears in town uninvited and who literally acts out her surname by settling happily down to a life of prostitution; Clay's only child, uncontrollable 6 year old Vearl, is living with a syphilis infection he inexplicably contracted in his fourth year; Lorene, one of the stronger personalities in the book, constantly harasses Clay or Susan to take her son Vearl to a doctor for treatment, but doesn't lift a finger to do so herself; and Clay, though he's had a bottle of medicine for the boy for two years, has yet to give Vearl even a spoonful.

In an original, hilarious, and daring scene, Caldwell has Clay, Semon, and neighbor Tom lightly fighting over and becoming addicted to peeping through a "slit" in the back wall of Tom's cowshed at the barbed wire fence and beautiful, lush woodland stretching beyond it. This slit "the ... little slit I ever saw in all my life," Tom calls it presents an opportunity for the characters not only to peer directly into nature's sprawling, all encompassing vulva, but to simultaneously glimpse through it the only pure, untouchable, incorruptible world they'll ever know that which exists forever beyond the 'barbed wire fence' of their own animal state of lust and gross stupidity. Passing a neighborly jug of 'corn,' the three briefly fall into a state of peace and understanding with one another. Even while competing and tricking one another for access to the hole, they spontaneously empathize with each other's need to peer through it again and again. The unfallen, Eden like natural world they see on the other side but which is directly perceivable only through the magic slit is a vision of paradise that briefly unites them. Thus the male gaze meets nature's maw at eye level with happy results for all.

When Semon clamorously preaches to the community in the local school house at night, his true nature manifests again not only in his rage but in the sudden appearance of the black flies, June bugs, mud daubers, wasps and biting red ants that swarm into the building. Ostensibly attempting to raise the population spiritually by forcing them to admit and reject their sins and torrid natures, Semon finally reduces the assembly by torchlight to sweating, barely clothed, hysterically orgasmic serpents, slithering on their stomachs, speaking gibberish, and twining themselves around one another and around the desks meant for presumably innocent school children. Only prostitute and sexual sophisticate Lorene "the biggest sinner" in Semon's eyes consciously rejects the preacher's spell, sitting in the back of the room in horrified, disgusted, but unconverted astonishment.

Journeyman appears to be about man's casual indifference to grasping and preventing the pitfalls of cause and effect, and about his inability to learn the lesson of even his most frightful, painful, and harrowing experiences. Its 'religious' theme was taken too literally at the time of its initial publication; today's readers should beware of making the same mistake especially because Semon is only a self appointed and ostensible man of God and remember to keep in mind the book's period context. Caldwell's material here, however, remains timeless, and none of the struggle he had in the writing of the book is apparent. Seamless like the best of his work, Journeyman is a pleasurable page turner, coarse and wise by turns.

A traveling preacher comes to spend the week at a small southern farmer's house. He isn't what he seems to be as all hell breaks loose. The preacher has more vices than a mob boss; including gambling, pimping, and seducing folks's wives. This was one of Caldwell's first books.

Caldwell makes fun of the traveling preacher and people's gullability of them. He also makes fun of the revival meetings in which people go into trances and contortions after having "demons" expelled from them. Racy and certainly funny this book is a quick read, which emphasizes the point that if someone in authority tells you it is okay to do something, it is not always right just because they said so.

well i havent read the book which is both stories combined The Poor Fool&The Bastard for 42 years it was a good read then and i hope i can aquire it again. Top Book but most of Erskine Caldwell books are. Thank You

grahame mccarthy

While this is probably not the best Caldwell book to read if you've never read Caldwell, it is gripping in a lurid, over the top, stink of death and madness kind of way. I loved it.

When Erskine Caldwell returned in 1941 from a visit to the war-torn USSR, he wrote this gripping adventure set in occupied Byelorussia. The main protagonist is Sergei, a young tractor-driver who joins the Partisan band of the charismatic guerrilla leader Pavlenko. Separated from his wife Natasha while escaping an encirclement, Sergei worries unceasingly about her safety while continuing to carry out raids against the invaders. He and his daring comrades, with the support of the Red Army, wreck trains, ambush trucks, and pick off sentries. Tragically, successful action often reaps swift retaliation from the Hitlerites, who slaughter and burn entire villages, and kidnap young women to frontline brothels. Erskine Caldwell, who authored such "lewd" literature as "God's Little Acre" and "Tobacco Road", is probably the only American novelist of his time who could describe so unflinchingly the mass rape of Slavic peasant-girls. Throughout the book, the Germans are depicted entirely as evil, inhuman beasts. Contrastingly, the Partisans are without exception brave, noble, and good. If such characterization seems unduly simplistic for a writer of Caldwell's stature, one must consider the times in which this novel was published. No reader could fail to feel sympathy and solidarity for the sacrifices of the distant Soviet Allies. Indeed, on the back cover of my yellowing 1942 edition is a patriotic message: "This book, like all books, is a symbol of the liberty and the freedom for which we fight. You, as a reader of books, can do your share in the desperate battle to protect those liberties -- BUY WAR BONDS!"