With the 1939 publication of his first novel, Let Me Breathe Thunder, William Attaway was hailed by Stanley Young in the New York Times Book Review as a writer of great promise, "an authentic young artist not to be watched tomorrow but now." His second novel, Blood on the Forge (1941), not only confirmed his promise but has been called by critic Robert A. Bone "by far the most perceptive novel of the Great Migration," the period spanning the 1920s and 1930s, when Afro-Americans in large numbers moved from the agrarian South to the industrial North. The notion, repeated in some later criticism, that Attaway's novels were neglected by the critics is untrue. Upon publication both works were reviewed in major critical journals, and both received high praise. Indeed, the most striking feature of the original reviews is the prediction of a great future for Attaway as a writer. Attaway...