"A landmark in the history of African-American fiction, this gripping 1901 novel was among the first literary challenges to racial stereotypes. Its tragic history of two families unfolds against the backdrop of the post-Reconstruction South and climaxes with a race riot based on an actual 1898 incident. One of America's first great African-American novelists, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) exposed the harsh dimensions of Southern prejudice before and after the Civil War. Powerful and passionate, his novels present richly imagined characters, both black and white, striving to make better lives for themselves"--
