So much of Paul Green's work has concerned Negroes that his name is identified with his powerful ability to portray the experiences of black people. We who have spent our lives with them thick around us, seeing them constantly, hearing what they say day after day, have had our ears sharpened to their speech and our eyes guided to see deeper into the secret places of their hearts by what Paul Green has written about them.

A few Negroes, part white, part black, have places in his "Wide Fields," but most of the book is given up to poor white farmers of the Carolina cotton belt, people who belong to that pathetic class situated between the descendants of former slave owners and those of former slaves….

Paul Green knows them. In "Wide Fields," he not only tells us about them, but he contrives to put us into their...