The poet, whose novel Hetter A Dinner Of Herbs (1950) projected a
lyrical and mystic line, here deals with the violence of an August
day and the single inhabitant of Niggertown - Dandelion, a lame
handyman, who, in going about his chores, goes to his doom. The
murder of a white whore who has borne a colored baby has driven all
the other Negroes from the town of Tilden and Dandy lives in fear
and distrust. This day, when young Rhode has murdered her aunt's
cat through jealousy of Farley's sensuous friendship with jonathan;
when Jonathan seeks a personal revelation of the Rev. Mr. Carhorn's
text; when Farley is trying to find out if sexual experience leaves
a visible stigma; when Miss Ella, the spinster owner of the
book-store, slides into the world of madness- brings the rumor and
suspicion of rape against Dandy. It lines up the symbols of money,
law, religion against him, along with the slavering mob; it impels
Farley's father to come out of his professorial ivory tower and try
to stop the impending senseless brutality; it forces the homosexual
relationship of Jonathan and Farley and prisons Rhoda in her aunt's
enamelled world; it sees Dandy viciously and madly lynched. White
and black - and sometimes gray, these are maimed and meanly people
in a flare of rage that is in accord with the weather fragmentarily
caught. In an intense beat of catastrophe. For a discerning
audience. (Kirkus Reviews)
Set in the small-town, pre-civil rights South, The Hawk and the Sun
is the story of one day in the life of Dandelion, a physically
impaired man who is the sole black resident in the town of Tilden.
Years before, the birth of a mixed-race child to a white prostitute
had precipitated an outpouring of hatred against Tilden's black
citizens, all of whom but Dandelion had been driven from town. In
this atmosphere of smoldering self-righteousness, Dandelion
survives on handouts and what little he can earn from odd jobs.
Finally, the town turns against him as well. Seen hurrying from the
house of the neurotic Miss Ella as her screams fill the air of an
August morning, Dandelion is apprehended and falsely accused of
rape. Before the day's end, he is tortured and lynched. In his
rendering of Dandelion, of those who murdered him, of those who
looked the other way, and of the lone white man who stood futilely
against the mob, Byron Herbert Reece brings his readers face to
face with the horrifying spectacle of collective fear and racism.
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