SOURCE: "No Place for a Black Boy to Swim," in The New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1993, p. 7.

[Dorris is an American poet, novelist, educator, and cultural anthropologist of Modoc Indian descent. In the review of Billy that follows, he examines the tragic consequences of racism.]

In rural Mississippi in 1937, there existed a line described entirely by race that could be fatally dangerous for anyone, even a child, to cross. The memory of slavery, the hardship of poverty and the tunnel vision of ignorance combined with a one-sided system of justice to divide communities as acutely as the stab of a sharp knife. Communication between the two sides was like a shout heard through mud: frightening, indistinct, annoying, poorly comprehended.

Billy, Albert French's wrenching first novel, deals with the violence that ripples out from a single incident: a pair of teen-age girls take umbrage when two little boys...