Negro Aristocracy

CHILDREN OF STRANGERS--Lyle Saxon --Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

Culturally the South still consists of a large group of small islands. Nowhere is this source of confusion to Northerners better dramatized than in the Cane River country of west central Louisiana, locale of Children of Strangers.

Settled around 1760 by a rich Frenchman and his New Orleans quadroon mistress, the 60-mile stretch of Cane River land was inherited by "free-mulattoes" who married New Orleans mulattoes, brought in French architects to build their houses, had their portraits painted, owned their own slaves. After the Civil War they had to sell out piecemeal to the present owners and antique-hunters, became sharecroppers. But they held on to their aristocratic traditions. To ward off outsiders, they married among themselves, had illegitimate children by itinerant whites, but kept strictly apart from Negroes. Almost white, fine-featured. French-speaking and Catholic, the 2,000 mulattoes on Cane River's "Yucca" plantation now share little in common with Negroes except their work and their social position in Southern white society.

Central character of Children of Strangers is a beautiful, chaste mulatto girl named Famie. Trouble begins when she spies on a red-headed white camper across the river, is seduced by him, but keeps going back. Her romance ends when the sheriff kills her lover, who is wanted for a Texas hold-up murder. After her redheaded, white baby is born she marries the conscience-stricken cousin who tipped off the sheriff after following her one night. But the child is the only thing she has any thought for. Until he is 13 she is still bathing him like a baby. Later to keep him in school in Chicago, she sends him her wages, sells her silver and furniture. The only time she sees him again is when he comes back to collect the money from the last of her land. At 35, Famie looks like an old woman; kinfolk have disowned her for selling her land; her only friend is a big, serious-minded, coal-black field hand.

Best parts of Children of Strangers are its portraits of minor plantation characters, its vivid local color. Its awkwardness is the result of Author Saxon's too often hiding Famie's story while he tells the more dramatic and less sentimental story of Cane River.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.