A Book From the Past

                It was my Aunt Lorene that caused me to read one of the biggest books of all time.  Aunt Lorene was the reader of the family. My parents did not read books and I don’t know of any of my other aunts or uncles that were readers.  The bookmobile from the county library was the source of my Aunt Lorene’s reading materials as she lived in what we called the country, away from a town.  It came every two weeks and she stocked up a stack of novels that kept her occupied until the bookmobile came around again.  She was the one who insisted that I read Gone With the Wind.  I was only in the ninth grade at that time and I was, as they say today, blown away by the book. 

                Gone With the Wind tweaked my interest in the old south and I yearned to read more novels set in that period.  Somehow, I stumbled upon a book called Fair Oaks, published in 1957 and written by Frank Yerby. Now in my golden years, that book somehow again came to mind.  A quick search on Amazon revealed that this 1950ish book was available as a used book from some obscure bookstore for only one cent, with the obligatory $3.99 shipping charge.  So after more than 55 years, I obtained a rather beaten, coffee stained, book- coverless copy of Fair Oaks.  I enjoyed reading this novel again as I had completely forgotten its plot about a young southern American lad who worked as a slave trader in Africa and later became the master of a majestic plantation in Mississippi called Fair Oaks.  I had forgotten how the novel had portrayed the ruthless and horrible conditions on the slave ships that traversed the Atlantic in the early and mid 1800s.  It was a pleasure to read this very adult novel without all the rough language and detailed romantic episodes that are so prevalent in today’s modern novels, although the N-word was used heavily throughout the book.  I must say that as a novice book reviewer, this book published in 1957 is a definite “good read”.

                Frank Yerby, the author of this book wrote several novels in the late 1940s and 1950s set in the old South.  He even continued to produce several novels up until his last novel in 1985.  Three of his novels were adapted into movies, The Foxes of Harrow (1947), The Golden Hawk (1952), and The Saracen Blade (1954). Oh yes, one interesting fact about this prolific author who wrote so elegantly and  insightful about the life of slaves in the old south  and something I didn’t know  until I reread Fair Oaks in 2017.  Frank Yerby was a celebrated African-American writer.