Prologue and Book 1, Part 1, Chapters 1-5 Summary

"Sacred Hunger" begins in the Prologue with the story of an elderly mulatto beggar named Luther Sawdust. He tells those in the bars in New Orleans and anyone else who will listen about his father, who was a doctor aboard a ship and a childhood in a settlement where whites and blacks lived in harmony. Book One then begins the story of this doctor and his family and the adventures and obstacles that take place on a slave ship called the Liverpool Merchant.

In the Prologue, a mulatto beggar named Luther Sawdust, known in the bars as the Paradise Nigger, says his father was a white doctor aboard a Liverpool ship. He tells tales of a childhood in a tropical paradise where whites and blacks lived together in peace. Although the written story...