Trouble in July [Hardcover]

Erskine Caldwell (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Duell, Sloane and Pearce (1943)
• ASIN: B001EEWWQ6
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Bryant Simon is professor of history and the Director of American Studies at Temple University. He is the author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America. His most recent book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks, looks at what our latte choices tell us about our daily desires and dreams. This research took him to more than 450 Starbucks in 10 countries.

He blogs at www.everythingbutthecoffee.net

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AMERICAN TERRORISM, August 19, 2001

By 

Bonita L. Davis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trouble in July (Brown Thrasher Books) (Paperback)

Sheriff McCurtain has a problem. It appears that a negro boy has been accused of raping a white gal. White folk in Flowery Branch can't allow that to happen and so a lynch mob forms. In times of crisis such as this the sheriff does what is politically correct; he goes fishing. This time McCurtain finds himself the fish on the hook who just can't get away no matter how hard he tries.

In this masterful piece of literature, Erskine Caldwell unravels before our eyes the pathology and terrorism of lynching in the south. No one could do a better job for Caldwell is a white southerner who grew up in an environment in which lynching was a common form of entertainment. Trouble in July goes deep into the psychology of what makes common white men into brutes and those who work for them into victims.

Like many men McCurtain finds it easier to ignore what is going on rather than try to contain the trouble. The more that he tries to wash his hands of the affair the worse it gets. Those in power see the political and economical ramifications of the act and call on him to jail the accused. After all,McCurtain is their political puppet to be manipulated at will.

Such an intriguing drama exposes the hypocrasy of the law and shows how fear can make even the most honest of men betray their basic values of justice. Fear reduces the "negro" community into one that becomes terrorized and beaten into submission. Fear allows the upholder of the law to allow things to get out of hand merely because he wants to be voted into office next year.

Although the characters are simple; their motives, thoughts and values are complex as they struggle with their consciences in carrying out their heinous acts of cowardliness. You have laid out before you the ugliness of a system that dehumanizes everyone involved. The foreward by Bryant Simon in this edition gives us the background which gave rise to this novel. According to Simon, the author has made a significant transition in his work by revealing the south's racism in a straightforward manner. He doesn't hold back the punches.

Caldwell has given us a masterpiece about American Terrorism at its zenith in the United States. You will be repulsed, angered, and yes, fearful as you follow the crowd. Our author won't let us become mere voyeurs. We become the lynch mob, the negroes, the soiled politicians and all that is sick in southern terrorism. Read this outstanding work, feel the terror and learn about overcoming the mob psychology in your life. I was deeply moved by Trouble In July and you will too.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Murder As A Kind Of Carnival", May 4, 2005

By 

J. E. Barnes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trouble in July (Brown Thrasher Books) (Paperback)

Written after the enormous successes of Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933) and the critical and popular failure of Journeyman (1935), Erskine Caldwell's Trouble In July (1940) is an earnest but listless novel which addresses the lynching of Negroes in the Deep South. Taking place during the period in which it was written, the novel is neither a black comedy burlesque like Tobacco Road nor an example of the more private, pseudo-surrealist fiction Caldwell produced with Journeyman or some of his many short stories of the era.

Instead, Trouble in July attempts and fails to achieve a finely poised balance between realistic fiction and a kind of Keystone Cops comedy. But pointed exaggeration at every level was Caldwell's forte, and the novel, which was written with difficulty over a period of several years, is redundant, flat, predictable, and anticlimactic, despite the piling up of several reoccurring cinematic plot devices, such as the worst possible person walking in the door or phoning at the absolute worst time. In Chapter Six, heavily put-upon sheriff and protagonist Jeff McCurtain conceives a plan to escape his duties by inventing a threatening posse of masked bandits, only to find himself held at gunpoint by an identical gang in reality.

Trouble In July features several politicians who are only concerned that the lynching, which they see as inevitable and acceptable as long as it reflects "the will of the people," not turn public opinion against them, a sheriff's deputy whose great joy in life is "hunting possums between midnight and dawn and tracking down runaway Negroes at every opportunity," vigilante gangs for whom the routine killing of blacks is the umbrella answer to most of life's problems, a religious zealot who is outraged that bibles depicting Christ as a black man are circulating in the Negro community, a signature-gathering campaign to "send all the Negroes to the country of Africa without delay," a black character, the object of the lynching, who is little more than a wide-and-wild eyed caricature, and, among other Caldwell stock characters, a fifteen year old uneducated white girl with an inordinate appetite for sex and attention.

God's Little Acre used a similar formula, but that novel, Caldwell's best, was fraught with tension and conflict, and, as a result, contains one of the most suspenseful and poignant climaxes in all of American literature. Perhaps due to the seriousness of its subject, Caldwell's creative exposition in Trouble in July is cautious to the point of being half hearted, and as a result, the novel, which is never quite believable on any level, creeps and crawls tentatively towards its conclusion rather than galloping confidently ahead.

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad interesting -good read-Shocking how others were treated in this country, December 30, 2011

By 

mimi - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Trouble in July (Brown Thrasher Books) (Kindle Edition)

Sheriff Jeff seems to not have a mind of his own. His only thinking was to keep his position and politics. Author did attempt to show small kinder side to him. The rest of the characters in the book were lunatics but descriptions were great. At times I became so angry I thought I may have to stop reading this book. I did continue on. It many be a fiction story but this really did happen. I have always been intrested in this time period and thought I would have liked to live then. I don't think I would have made it long. I would have been shot for fighting for human rights. What is a political lynching!!! This is the second I have read by this author. I think all the many authors I have been introduced to through my kindle. I never would have chanced buying them or even finding them in our small town library in Northeast Pa. I love it. I plan to read more of this author.Please never forget this time period in our history so will never happen again.