[Julia Peterkin] deserves a greater measure of critical attention than she has received. She was, after all, a Pulitzer Prize winner during a time when many intellectuals still were agreeing with Mencken that the South was the "Sahara of the Bozart." In the late 1920's and early 1930's she was acclaimed in Eastern literary circles and in the black intellectual community as the Southerner who best understood the black experience, who portrayed without prejudice or condescension black characters in a black world.

To be sure, the Pulitzer Prize is no absolute measure of lasting literary fame, nor should a preoccupation with matters racial command automatic attention; yet there is still more to be said for her. At her best she is a consummate artist and almost without exception her narratives are powerful, even shocking in their spare intensity. No one has probed the potential horrors of rural life...