Customer Reviews

Benton's Row

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With Benton's Row, Frank Yerby, returns to the south - to the exotic Louisiana of his greatest triumphs, The Foxes of Harrow and The Vixens - to tell the spell binding story of four brawling generations of a fabulous Delta Clan...and of the elicit Cajun Branch of the family that brings the saga of the Benton's to it's violent climax.

From the day in 1842, when Tom Benton arrives in the Red River Valley, one jump ahead of a Texas posse bent on hanging him - to the day in 1920 when his wife, Sarah, aged 97, dies peacefully in her rocker on the veranda of the plantation house at Broad Acres - this is a book in the magnificent tradition of the American Historical Novel. In it's tremendous span, readers will meet the richest cast of characters Frank Yerby has ever created...

Makes you think a lot of Gone with the Wind when you are reading it. Sort of the same style, fashion, aura.

The book is exceptional. I came across it while thumbing through books at work, no cover, just a plain book. My first impression was that I was about to read a western. Further into the book I got a strange reaction to the referencing of the Slave population in general. The language used would definitely offend a large number of readers. I was taken back by the constant use of the word "nig---" and it gave me the impression that it was exactly as people had talked back then. The author reduced the black field workers to farm animals. Sarah, the wife of Tom Benton, speaks well of her servants and actually cherishes several for their grace and work abilities. Later, following the abolishing of slavery, many of the field workers stayed on regardless of the promise of land and a mule. Later, as the Klu Klux Klan makes its appearance, a school is burned to the ground and innocent blacks are killed, a young couple particularly, who loved each other very much were both burned and the man was shot outside the school house attempting to save his fiance. I thought Wade to be a miserable man, scared of his own shadow and responsible for the deaths of many people, including his father. I would say if words do not offend the reader, this book is a real eye opener. Along with the men involved in the saga comes adultery, fraud, embezzlement, the Mafia, cat houses, deception, and war. It was very well written.