Abanda

About The Book:  A semi-autobiographical nbovel set in a small, rural Alabama community during the height of World War II.  At that time, the modern Civil Rights Movement was scarcely in its infancy.  The main characters are two ten-year-old sons of sharecroppers-one black and one white.  Amid the difficulties, deprivations, and disadvantages resulting from living on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, they share a friendship that carries them through touch times and enriches their lives with joy.  A terrible sequence of events threatens that friendship and rocks their world.

About The Author:  John H. Hayes is Frank N. Parker Professor Emeritus in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  He has authored and edited numerous academic volumes and written a collection of popular essays:  if You Don't Like the Possum, Enjoy the Sweet Potatoes:  Some Principles for Travel along the road of Life.  This is his first novel.

My Thoughts About The Book:  Living near the town of Abanda I was delighted to get my hands on the novel and read it.   It was not a feel good novel.  It was a novel that was so close to reality that it could have been an autobiography.  I could have been my own father's story.  The story of the young sharecropper boys whose innocense is taken from them by the hardships they indure was sad.  There were times when I was reading the book that I felt a tremendous amount of anger at Josh's parents only to realize that they too were victims of circumstance.  The story is a dry one.  The characters are real-like with human feelings, emotions, and reactions.  I will never look at the town of Abanda in the same light.....but then....I live in the south and know how unkind life has been to many throughout the course of history. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author himself.  I was not required to write a positive review. All he asked for was an honest review.  The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255.