Baby Sweet's by Raymond Andrews

Baby Sweet's by Raymond Andrews

Bawdy and sometimes horrifying, hilarious on the way to being tragic, Raymond Andrews's Muskhogean County novels tell of black life in the Deep South from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the 1960s, from the days of mules and white men with bullwhips to the moment when the pendulum began to swing.

This story tells of a venture between John Morgan Jr., the dissolute heir to Appalachee's leading white family, and Baby Sweet Jackson, owner of the once-vibrant Red's Cafe in Dark Town. On Independence Day, 1966, the partners open Muskhogean County's first bordello, with two dark-skinned black women, Lana Lips and Fig, ready for the expected white clientele. Then a mysterious woman, announcing herself as the 'third whore,' arrives—and proclaims that her body will be 'for colored only.'

Stylish and funny, a pleasure to read. . The novel is related as smoothly as a tale told on a back porch.

A superlative storyteller with a keen ear . . . Andrew's characters are so robust they virtually leap off the page.

One reads Andrews for his raucous and robust humor, his really profound knowledge of the South, his ultimately accepting and benign vision—of a world in which blacks and whites sometimes hate and mistreat one another but ultimately arrive at an understanding—and most of all for the entertaining voice that tells the stories.

RAYMOND ANDREWS was born in Morgan County, Georgia, in 1934, the fourth of ten children. Leaving Georgia to join the Air Force and then study at Michigan State University, he moved to New York City in 1958 and lived between there and Europe for twenty-seven years before returning to Georgia. Andrews's novels include the Muskhogean County trilogy: Appalachee Red, Rosiebelle Lee Wildcat Tennessee, and Baby Sweet's (all Georgia).