Growing up in a liberal home in Los Angeles, a daughter of parents who marched for civil rights and whose attorney father worked pro bono for the downtrodden, I never really understood the mindset that is the South's. While Southerners politely complain that the rest of the U.S. doesn't understand them, quite frankly, until reading Run With The Horseman by Ferrol Sams, I couldn't figure out why anyone would even want to make the effort. If that sounds harsh, it is. And unjustifiably so, apparently.

Ferrol Sams isn't merely writing a tale of a boy growing up in the South and his rites of passage. He entertains and educates in what sounds like a suspiciously autobiographical account (although he disclaims it) of life as the son of a white landowner and the codependent relationships of those things so inherently Southern: chivalry, alcoholism, race relations,

When he was nine or ten, the boy was visiting Tabitha one afternoon while she ironed clothes. He watched her substitute a cooled flatiron for a hot one sitting on the freshly whitewashed hearth before glowing hickory embers, flicking it with a spittle-moistened finger to see if it sizzled satisfactorily. Hearing the hiss of hot, heavy metal as it touched moistened linen and smelling the steam rising from iron and starched fabric, relaxed and filled with contentment, he was moved to tell her earnestly and sincerely how much he loved her. She stopped midway between fireplace and ironing board, swung around, and looked him squarely in the eye. "You love me so much, boy, that when I die you goan say, 'She sho was faithful?'" Their glances locked for an interminable, naked moment. The boy's ears rang with the dizzying silence of unseen spinning planets, and he walked home without another word being spoken. He never forgot the question, and he never forgot the look.


. . . religion, gossip, corruption, the red clay soil, the slower pace of life, and death.


The supreme compliment for an undertaker was for the community ladies to murmur behind their handkerchiefs, "Doesn't he look natural," or "She's just beautiful," or "It looks like he's sleeping. It wouldn't surprise me if he opened his eyes and spoke to me." The boy, a veteran of many funerals, had discovered long ago that grown folks did a heap of lying when someone died. He assumed that this was part of the ritual.

How these things integrate into the bigger picture of life's wonders and trials and the world at large provide opportunities for belly laughs and belly aches, tears and poignancy. I've read this trilogy (the others are The Whisper of the River and When All the World Was Young) so many times that now, some of my best friends are even Southerners.

I wish I could include a few of the more humorous passages in this review, but the detailed and evocative accounts would take several pages, and to not include them in full would be cheating the reader. The delightful protagonist is not only funny and mischievous, he's so clever . . . don't miss this book!

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