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Trouble in July

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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.

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.

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.

Hatred, bigotry, lust, lynchings and mayhem all take place in the ole south. After reading trouble in July I ran out and bought "A PLACE CALLED ESTHERVILLE", here again Caldwell displays just how good his writing & story telling skills are. I read "TROUBLE IN JULY ABOUT 13 YRS. AGO. The book was lent to a friend and never returned. I was delighted when I saw that the book had been reprinted, I plan on purchasing another copy. This book has stayed on my mind for years. I wish Caldwell was still alive so he could write more of these novels with stories from the land of dixie. Trouble in july will move you and bring you close to tears, trust me and keep a hankie close at hand.

one of the best books written about the ole south filled with bigory, passion, rape, hatred, i lent this book to a friend about 10 yrs. ago have been trying to get a new copy since then. erskine caldwell is at his best. don't miss this one

Set in his familiar sandy hills in the Savannah River Valley, Caldwell presents another piece to what he called his Cyclorama of Modern Southern life. The tragedy of Southern race relations after Emancipation is allegorized in the lynching of a young black man for the rape of a white sharecropper's daughter.

The closest thing to a main character is the Sheriff of the county, Jeff McCurtain. McCurtain is convinced to "keep the lynching politically clean." Representing the political powers of the inter War South, McCurtain is afraid to stand up to the people in the name of the law. As he tries to avoid contact with the lynch mob, he also seeks out a Black man who he considers "harmless" and therefore shouldn't be mixed up in the whole lynching.

Characters represent the three commonly thought views of Black Americans held by Southern whites at the time. The rich landowner wants the sheriff to catch the suspected racist, so as life can get back to normal and other blacks will keep working his plantation. The catalyst of the incident, a politically involved woman who may be sleeping with the pastor, is circulating a petition that all blacks should be rounded up and sent back to Africa. Yet the third is a man in the mob who is against the petition:

"The best way is just like I said. String one of them up ever so often. That'll make all of them keep their place. Hell, if there wasn't no more niggers in the country I'd feel lost without them. Besides, who'd do all the work if the niggers were sent away?"

Caldwell appears to have his finger on the pulse of white social-economic view of black Southerners. Like the helots and the Spartans, the backward stagnant economic system of the interwar South is based on white Southerners keeping black Southerners in virtual economic servitude.

"Trouble in July" is the most real of Caldwell's novels in his "cyclorama" that I have read yet. The allegory is not too far from the tree as the almost surreal characters in "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre." However, it does not have the full emersion in the world of the sand hills that the other two have. One almost expects the end where McCurtain begins to question his own actions during the story.

All in all I find it not a great work. Its subject matter is more important to the modern reader than some of Caldwell's other works as he like Ida B. Wells, throws the Southern view of civilization upon its head. Additionally, it reminds us why the words of people like Kelly Tilghman, the Golf channel anchor, and Bill O'Reilly (declaring he would lynch Michelle Obama if there was evidence) are so dangerous. People are quick to join mobs and the law is slow to challenge what seems the will of the people even if it is against the very things we stand for.