Sojourn of a Stranger — Walter Sullivan

In his debut novel, originally published in 1957, Walter Sullivan reaches back exactly one hundred years to a time in Tennessee not so very different from the South just before the civil rights movement - when Allen Hendrick's advantages of social standing, wealth, and "good breeding" proved powerless in the pursuit of love because of the taint of his octoroon mother's Negro blood. This work of historical fiction brings the forces of injustice, idealism, vengeance, and sorrow alive through its authentic details and superb characters. In the end a tender story about love - of various kinds - and the return from emotional exile.