[What] makes The Dahomean seem superior to Yerby's earlier best sellers?

I believe a major reason is that Frank Yerby has written about the history of Africans and that I, as a Black man, am more interested in the generally ignored account of my ancestral past than I am in another gallop—even a thrilling gallop—through the frequently traveled terrain of medieval Europe or the Crusades or the antebellum American South. (p. 52)

[Despite] Yerby's comment that the Furtoos (whites) may have been more coldbloodedly cruel, there is nothing distinctively or generically Black or African about the character, intelligence, or behavior of the Africans in Yerby's novel….

That, perhaps, is what Yerby has been saying, or thinking, throughout a quarter of a century of writing novels: the differences between people do not stem from a difference of blood but a difference of opportunity and power. (p. 84)

The story...