Send It on Down: A Southern Fiction Novel

There was a time in the Mississippi Delta when the only world the blacks knew was one of servant-hood to the landowners. Young George Barton was born into that world; but in rural Bluff City the tide is changing.

Bluff City is a small world within the Mississippi Delta where George, Alex, and Jony grow up as friends, having many happy times playing together at No Mistake Plantation a few miles outside of town. George is black and the son of the cook for the big house where Jony's parents, the Wentworths, live. Alex is the son of a white CEO whose family moved to this small Mississippi town from out west.

The time is the 1960s, and a government mandate is coming that will force total integration within the public school system. Adaptation and change is hard for many, both black and white. When change is not welcome, resistance finds its way into the heart. Families who were friends for years find themselves distanced by this sudden change. Friendships are split and the town is never to be the same for the boys.

The Wentworths, a good family, steeped in the tradition of plantation ownership, find it difficult to reconcile this within them; especially with a dark secret carried on the plantation for almost two generations. Claudia and Gerald Proust and their children, newcomers to Bluff City, don't seem to grasp the "way it should be" as the local white folks do. And George Barton, a young black boy with a vision, wants to change it all. Maybe he can use this unwanted change to help his people finally become something other than what they had always been.

Follow the story of these three young boys, growing into adulthood with interlocking contacts involving intrigue, hardships, murder, the Klan, romance, and forgiveness.

A native of the south, D.J. McNeil has lived in Mississippi, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida. McNeil graduated from the University of Georgia with a unique, at that time, B.F.A. degree, having studied under the famous artist Lamar Dodd. The education was put to good use in teaching middle school students, which won numerous gold medals in the Tri-State Scholastic Exhibit. As a result of that, an award was also created for the school and its art teachers, Malcolm Norwood and McNeil, for best overall art work in three states. After years of teaching, getting married, and having a family, the story of the book gradually developed in the author’s mind. Having lived through the historical time of federally enforced public school integration, in a town basically opposed to it, McNeil’s experiences provided an excellent background for “Send It On Down” to take place.