The Store by T. S. Stribling, 1932

The Store by T. S. Stribling, written in 1932, is the second of a three-part series about the South, before, during, and after the Civil War. The first book is The Forge and the third is The Unfinished Cathedral. Together, the three books are an excellent description of the war told through the experiences of the Vaiden family. Unlike Gone With the Wind, the series by Stribling is not sympathetic to the Southern point of view of the war, of the institution of slavery or of the aftermath of the Civil War. Stribling grew up in a family in Tennessee where one of his grandfathers served in the Confederate Army and one served in the Union Army. The Forge starts with the Vaiden family on their small plantation just before the War. They live in Northern Alabama, close to Tennessee, and own a few slaves.

Miltiades Vaiden, is the central character in the series. He fights in the War, as described in The Forge, and comes out of it a colonel and is called by that title the rest of his life. The Vaiden family is followed through the War and afterward, to the end of the series. Miltiades Vaiden represents the valiant Confederate officer who brought honor to his state even though the South lost the war. Running through the series of books is the Vaiden family’s relationship with their slaves and former slaves. In The Store, the Colonel is without employment, barely living off the sharecroppers who work on their old plantation. For a time he is active in getting a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan started in his area. It’s interesting that the Klan was started, according to Stribling, as away of using fear and intimidation to keep the former slaves working on the estates as sharecroppers.

Through a dishonest act Miltiades gets the money to start a store. His wife dies and he marries the daughter of the woman he almost married at the outset of the War. In The Unfinished Cathedral, Miltiades is a wealthy banker who is trying to have a large cathedral built in his honor and as a place for him to be buried at the end of his life. The story ends as the Great Depression sets in and the wealth gained by Miltiades is lost and so is the cathedral he is building.

Miltiades is a flawed man who, when he no longer has the labor of slaves to sustain his wealth, turns to dishonest means to regain a position of influence. In the process, he leads other men in the Klan to intimidate the former slaves and keep their labor on the farms as sharecroppers. Miltiades succeeds in business for a time but fails in the end and dies a broken man. I think Stribling meant Miltiades to represent the South that benefited from slavery but lost in the end. I found it hard at times to read about how the slaves and freed slaves were treated by some Southerners. They were emancipated in the Civil War but were kept in their place by forces in the South that needed them as laborers and sharecroppers.

This is one more forgotten yet great novel that I found by reading the Pulitzer winners. I strongly recommend reading the series by Stribling, starting with the Forge. It is a great account of the South, slavery, reconstruction, and of the onset of the Great Depression.

Laughing Boy by Oliver LaFarge

             Laughing Boy is another of the great novels that I would never have heard of if I had not been collecting and reading the works that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Laughing Boy can, perhaps, be described as “A Navajo Tragedy.”  Written in 1929 by La Farge who had been an anthropologist among the Navajo and other tribes of the Southwest, the book struck me as a rather authentic story of the impact of American culture on the Navajo people.  It was told by a white man living among the Indians and may have many inaccuracies and misinterpretations.  I have read some critiques of Laughing Boy that express the opinion that no white man can ever understand Indian culture.  Be that as it may, La Farge made a good effort and tells a story that was honored with a Pulitzer Prize and is well worth reading. 

I had strong feelings for the young Navajo man, Laughing Boy, as he encountered for the first time some of most damaging aspects of the Americans who had come to live in the Southwest.  The story tells of his meeting Slim Girl, a Navajo woman who had been taken from her family as a young girl and sent to a school for Indians in California.  When she finally made her way back to Navajo country, she found that she was neither American or Navajo.  She enticed Laughing Boy, a traditional Navajo, into marriage in order to help her find a way back to the Navajo way of life.  Instead, she led him into some of the worst aspects of American life.  With Slim Girl mixing drinks, Laughing Boy has his first taste of whiskey.  It’s a poignant moment when you realize how often this must have happened to Indian people who would become slaves to alcohol and ruined by its influence. 

Slim Girl tries to live in two worlds: the Navajo world with Laughing Boy and the American world with a man who pays her for sleeping with him.  She goes off during the day to clean house for the minister’s wife, as she tells Laughing Boy, but actually goes to meet her wealthy American.  Slim Girl justifies this by believing that she is getting even with the Americans who took her life away from her.  Laughing Boy eventually finds out about her double life, catches her with the American, and then reacts.  This is where real trouble begins. 
I won't give away anymore of the story but it has a  tragic ending.  Laughing Boy's faith and religious conviction from his Navajo upbringing and way of life help him go through what he has to face. Laughing Boy is a strong statement about how much good is in the traditional Navajo way of life.  Even if there are inaccuracies, Laughing Boy conveys the evil that was brought to the Navajos because of the Americans encroaching into their world and way of life.  This is an important book to read, especially by Americans who have grown up believing that the Indians were just savages who deserved to be run off their lands and herded onto reservations.