George Wylie Henderson commands an important position in the history of Black American writing because his novels provide a vital literary link between the writers of the Harlem school and those in the school of Richard Wright. His first novel, Ollie Miss (1935), relies upon a distinctly black tradition as the basis for his art; it also reflects his commitment to the concept of cultural dualism so strongly advocated by the proponents of the Harlem school. A work remarkable for its aesthetic and technical properties, Ollie Miss expresses a sensibility clearly shaped by the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. A skillful interpretation of rural life in the Deep South during the first quarter of the twentieth century, it unfolds a turbulent human drama in the midst of pastoral serenity. Henderson's second novel, Jule (1946), marks a philosophical shift toward racial protest, and it is, therefore, clearly akin to the novels...