Florida Flatwoods

BLOOD OF THE LAMB (275 pp.) --Charles H. Baker Jr.--Rinehart ($2.50).

"Preacher Gudger," said Ma Conroy, "this here oldest gal o' mine name Roma-jean purely loves to sing. She kin sing a church song low and she kin line it out sweet. . . . Preacher, we purely need that two bits a Sunday you pay yore choir singers. If you can use her I reckon the good Lord shore will love you."

Pasty-faced Preacher Gudger (he had "the body of a garden slug, the soul of a gimlet, and the morals of a beagle") looked pretty Romajean up & down, blinked, licked his lips, and allowed that maybe he could arrange to oblige. So Romajean came to sing in the choir of the Primitive Pentacostal Host Church, and Gudger figured that he had added another tender ewe lamb to his flock. Preacher Gudger's flock was largely old goat and tough mutton: Old Lady Clutiebelle Tippy, Thrash Mancil, Miz Pinniz Nice, Crave Tollett and a few dozen other crackers from the Orange County, Fla. flatwoods.

Florida tourist literature, understandably, keeps pretty mum about this kind of folk, but Novelist Baker claims to have known them all his life and makes out a good case for their being a particularly cussed and ornery lot. Blood of the Lamb is not much of a novel, but it is long on local color, loud piety, snuff, "stump liquor" and local talk.

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