SOUTH OF HAUNTED DREAMS

by Eddy L. Harris For American blacks, crossing into the South has always been a meaningful transition, a journey weighted with all the burdens of history and oppression. Now, a remarkable young writer sets forth, via motorcycle, on a new journey into "slavery's old back yard," a territory where old hurts and troubled memories linger around every corner. Eddy Harris's first two books, Mississippi Solo and Native Stranger, generated the kind of attention and praise that attends the rise of only the finest talents. In South of Haunted Dreams he has created a modern classic that combines the lively detail of travel writing with a brilliant exploration of race in America, then and now. Like Roots, "South" captures the feelings that define a generation and a moment in history. Yet Harris writes personally - with real emotion and a twist of irony. "I did not travel across Africa to find my roots," he writes. "I traveled the South to find them. For the South, not Africa, Selma. Nashville. Memphis. All the old locales speed by as the feelings rise, the feelings that Eddy Harris must confront for himself and for all Americans. Ultimately, however, South of Haunted Dreams is neither a tale of recrimination nor a rehashing of old sorrows. It is for a new generation a journey into what may still be America's most powerful landscape. No one who accompanies Eddy Harris will be left unchanged

Hardcover: 254 pages