Hehonee Hero

AMBER SATYR--Roy Flannagan--Doubleday, Doran ($2).

Once past its rental-library title, which fits its subject like somebody else's glove, readers of New Author Flannagan's book will pull up only at its end papers, with a sigh. Though dealing with the fairly thoroughly canvassed tragic situation, or lack of situation, of half-breed Negroes in the South, the book tells its story with a ruthless, rare good humor. It is a highly un-saccharine good humor which will remind readers more of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn than of the Peterkin school of writers on Negro themes. And Author Flannagan, without the usual studied accoutrements of a simple style, can write simple conversational English to a turn.

Near Ball's Wharf, among the scattering of poor white farmers, lives Luther Harris, a great six-foot yellow giant whom all, even mules and bulls, respect. It is rumored that he and his relatives the Batkins, who live up river in the Hehonee swamps, are of Indian descent. It is an Indian that Luther would like to be so that his daughter Sis could break the color line, go off to government school at the Tohannock Indian reservation. Semmes Maiden, a young lawyer from Battleburg, the State capital, capitalizes on this desire of Luther's, persuades him and his relatives to put in their claims as Hehonee Indians, along with the Tohannocks, who are agitating for an equal footing with the whites.

Pending the hearing of this burlesque claim Luther lives happily at home with Sis, works out for a poor white farmer, John Sprouse. John has chronic rheumatism which does not endear him to Sarah, his lusty-bodied wife. Her eyes roam to Luther's agile body in the fields, and there they stay. She tries to snare him, but he has the wit to stay away. Meanwhile John Sprouse's worthless brother Bengo debauches Sis, and, to forestall Luther's possible revenge, attacks him. Luther, broken-hearted about Sis, who can never pass for an Indian girl now, knows it is time for him to clear out of Ball's Wharf. He sends Sis off to the Batkins' to bear her child, while he goes off to Battleburg to work, and to await, with the Tohannock Indians, the Government's decision on their claim.

Luther gets a girl for himself in Battle-burg, makes himself there a homesick kind of home. All day and every day for weeks the Tohannocks and the Hehonees stand in full Indian regalia in the capitol lobby for the assemblymen to see. All day, back home at Ball's Wharf, Sarah Sprouse, whose husband John has died, dreams of Luther. Finally she begins to write him love letters on the sly. But Bengo Sprouse finds out, tells his brother Willis, who is a deputy sheriff, and who has been making up to Sarah himself. When, after the Legislature has turned down the Indian claim, Luther takes the train home, Bengo and Willis waylay him at a lonely station, handcuff him, search him for Sarah's letters. A minute later

Luther's bullet-riddled body is in the ditch.

The Author-Born in Charlottesville, Va. in 1897, Author Flannagan attended the University of Virginia until the War lifted him from his books into the Air Corps, though he did not fly overseas. He started newspaper work with the Atlanta Journal in 1919, has worked with the

Richmond News Leader since 1923. Though married to an Indiana girl, he has never lived outside the South. His familiarity with Southern rustics, lawyers and politicians is brilliantly attested in his book. Other (first) book, The Whipping, is a grim comedy of Ku Kluckery.

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