The Bitterweed Path: A Rediscovered Novel

Originally published in 1950, the long out-of-print novel The Bitterweed Path was rediscovered in 1996 with the support of John Howard’s critical introduction. In the years since, new generations have witnessed its subtle yet daring contribution to Southern gay literature. This 75th anniversary edition includes a new foreword by John Howard and a new afterword by Harry Thomas Jr. that provide fresh insight into the workings of race, class, and queerness in this enduring novel.

In The Bitterweed Path, Thomas Hal Phillips vividly recreates rural Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century. In elegant prose, he draws on the Old Testament story of David and Jonathan and writes of the friendship and love between two boys—one a sharecropper’s son and the other the son of the landlord—and the complications that arise when the father of one of the boys falls in love with his son’s friend. Defying stereotypes about both Mississippi and the 1950s, The Bitterweed Path challenges conceptions of the US South as a place devoid of queerness and reimagines it as alive with same-sex desire.

Thomas Hal Phillips (1922–2007) was a novelist, actor, and Hollywood screenwriter and consultant from Mississippi. His film work includes Nashville, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and he authored the novels Search for a Hero and Red Midnight.

John Howard is emeritus professor of arts and humanities at King’s College London and author of several books including Men Like That: A Southern Queer History.

Harry Thomas Jr. is an independent scholar based in Durham, North Carolina, and author of Sissy! The Effeminate Paradox in Postwar US Literature and Culture.