The Sons of Ham. A Tale of the New South.

Hard cover, octavo, in blue cloth with titles in black to front and spine. (6) 328 pp. plus 16 pp. publisher's adverts. Condition: Good. Ex-library with old paper label to spine and vintage library bookplate to the pastedown. Exterior soiled at edges, with moderate rubbing. Interior is moderately browned but otherwise firm and only occasionally soiled. The novel describes some of the tensions in post-Civil War Georgia, showing new sorts of conflict between the newly disenfranchised, their former slaves and northern carpetbaggers. Among the memorable characters in this inland, cotton-growing town, are Reba Lawrence, a formerly-gentrified young woman forced by poverty to take in sewing from her family's former slaves to survive. Which suitor will solve her matrimonial and monetary plight? An educated black man, "The Professor," is the recipient of her family's books in payment for the laundry his mother offers to continue doing in lieu of other payment. The morally suspect Rosetta enjoys the local entertainments and stepping out on the sly with Cicero, enraging the mother of his children. The author, Louis Beauregard Pendleton (1861-1939), the son of a newspaper publisher, was himself a journalist in his native Georgia, as well as an author of novels, juvenile fiction and a well-received biography of Alexander Stevens. OCLC 4050969. Scarce.…