A story of Tennessee, which treats of the race question. Viry, whose mother is three parts white and whose father is a Southern gentleman, feels the call of the white race but is doomed to be relegated to the black. Loathing any affiliation with them, she is one of them, and the slight arguments used by her dead father’s wife, who forgives her husband and nobly tries to do her duty by his alien child, neither help her nor solve the problem. There are other characters and an account of the development of the phosphate region.
“It is the first compassionate, intelligent interpretation ever written by any white person, North or South, of that pathetic class of men and women who suffer the loneliness and humiliation of a peculiar condition. The sympathetic attitude of the book merits all praise, and it is a story full of incident and interest.”
| + | Ind. 58: 902. Ap. 20, ‘05. 470w. |
“The author has written with sincerity and with a high purpose; and, although there are things regrettable in her book, and she has fallen short of her aim, she has done some admirable work, and has achieved a striking story, quite out of the ordinary.”
| + — | N. Y. Times. 10: 130. Mr. 4, ‘05. 790w. |
“The story is unusual in its nobility of spirit and its sanity.”
| + | Outlook. 79: 773. Ap. 1, ‘05. 150w. |
“It is admirably constructed and well carried out save for a somewhat forced and over-pathetic conclusion.”
| + + — | Pub. Opin. 38: 713. My. 6, ‘05. 100w. |
“‘The master-word’ is a book that stands far above the average of contemporary fiction.”