A SYNOPSIS OF
FRANK YERBY: A VICTIM’S GUILT
A Transformative Novel
By
Eugene Stovall
PUBLICATION DATE: January 6, 2006
PUBLISHER: REGENT PRESS
DISRIBUTOR: Baker & Taylor
ISBN NUMBER: 1-58790-124-2
NUMBER OF PAGES: 460
SOFT COVER PERFECT BINDING
PRICE: $25.95
Frank Yerby, an African American novelist, gave the world a body of literature that inspired and thrilled millions of readers. A brilliant story teller and intellectual giant, it is estimated that Yerby at the time of his death in 1991 had sold more books than all other African American novelists combined. With the publication of his twenty-fifth novel, A Voyage Unplanned, Yerby had sold over 55 million books in eighty-two countries and in twenty-three languages. In all Yerby wrote thirty-three novels, including four that were made into Hollywood movies. Yet, he is virtually unknown to most Black Americans.
In his novel Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt, Eugene Stovall brings Frank Yerby and his characters come back to life. Determined not to be forgotten, Yerby’s characters impose themselves upon Yerby and upon history. And the reader is never quite certain if it is fact, fiction … or a separate reality.
In this unique work, Stovall explores the concept of guilt … one of Frank Yerby’s notions … from the standpoint of history … only to discover that some important historical facts accepted today have been distorted. And Stovall begins to reveal secrets that have been hidden away for years.
Part One
A Mother’s Guilt
The princess Sumayla, a character in Yerby‘s Odor of Sanctity, is given the powers of Jewish mysticism by Moses Abulafia. Lady Sumayla uses her powers to bid Frank Yerby to present himself to her in 9thcentury Cordoba in Spain which is ruled by Emir al-Rahman II… the second most powerful ruler in the Islamic Empire. Al-Rahman II is a target of a plot involving Lady Sumayla and her master the emir’s grand vizier, Abu L’Fath Nasr … a secret agent of Alfonso the Christian king who has vowed to drive the Muslims out of Spain. Nasr conspires with the Lady Sumayla to overthrow the emir and put her son, prince al-Kamil ibn Karim, on the emir’s throne. Kamil, whose father is Alaric, a Christian Goth, and who favors Christianity becomes an even more pliable pawn in King Alfonso’s scheme to overthrow the emir when Nasr arranges for Kamil and the favorite wife of al-Rahman II, the Lady Tarub, to fall in love. When Kamil is put on the throne, the emirate will be so weak that Alfonso’s army will sweep through Spain with no resistance. In order to guarantee the success of the plot, Nasr has directed Sumayla to summon Yerby to them what the outcome of their plot will be. The grand vizier vows that either Yerby will tell him what he wants to know or Nasr will have Yerby beheaded.
In the meantime, even though the Moors promote religious tolerance and permit the Christians and well as the Jews to worship in their own way in their own churches and synagogues, Eulogius, an ambitious Christian priest calls for resistance. He wants the Christians in Cordoba to defy Islamic rule and suffer martyrdom. He knows that King Alfonso practices the Christian heresy of Arianism that is more hated and feared in Rome than Islam, itself. This heresy, practiced by the Germanic tribes of northern Europe, taught the racial superiority of arians over all other races and that Christ, himself, was an arian. Eulogius encourages his followers to commit acts of blasphemy against Islam as a way of protecting Roman Catholicism from Arian Catholicism.
Heads roll when Nasr’s plot to take over an empire the empire is uncovered by the emir whose own spies are everywhere. And ultimately the princess Sumayla must bear the guilt of putting her only son, Kamil, into a situation where there is a chance that he will lose his head. And Sumayla turns to Frank Yerby in a final effort to save not only her son’s life … but also her own.
Part Two
A Lover’s Guilt
Spanish-held Cuba is a hotbed of insurrection and political intrigue. The Cuban-born planters, known as hacendados, have been forced to sell their produce, including the highly prized Cuban tobacco, to the Factoria … a monopoly of the Spanish Crown. The Factoria pays little or nothing to the hacendados, but earns huge profits in the European markets. The hacendados plot against the Spanish. They engage in smuggling and they incite rebellion. Narciso Lopez, a former governor of a Cuban province and a conspirator against the Spanish Crown, also plots. A year earlier, he had paid John Quitman … governor of Mississippi and titular head of the Southern nullification movement … a million dollars to provide men and weapons in an abortive effort to overthrow Spanish rule in Cuba. Quitman was indicted in federal court for his involvement with Narciso Lopez and forced to resign as governor of Mississippi. Now once again Lopez conspires with Quitman to raise an American mercenary force to invade Cuba and overthrow the Spanish. But the hacendados, raise three million American dollars for Quitman … they are not eager to trade subservience to the Spanish Crown for subservience to the americanos or General Narciso Lopez. So even though Quitman, who dreams of a vast slaveholding empire based in the Americas, supported Lopez’s failed attempt to invade Cuba last year, this year Quitman’s plans have changed. He decides that the time nullification has come. Quitman intends to lead the South from the union and establish a confederacy of slave-owning plantation owners throughout the Americas. So neither Quitman nor the hacendados have any interest in freeing Cuban slaves.
One of Quitman’s important connections in the nullification movement is with Francis Pickens of South Carolina. Pickens has a vexing problem. The love of his life, Lucy Holcombe, a Sothern belle young enough to be his daughter, has rejected Pickens for William Crittendum, a young, dashing army lieutenant and a scion of one of the first families of Kentucky. Billy Crittendum’s family includes a United States Senator and a Secretary of State. But Quitman sees an opportunity to cement his relations with Pickens and guarantee South Carolina’s support for his nullification movement. Assuring his friend that all will be well, Quitman sends the young lieutenant to accompany Narciso Lopez’s invasion of Cuba. However, instead of sending the 5000 men Lopez had expected, Quitman sends less than 500. One hundred and fifty of these mercenaries are wharf rats from New Orleans … orphaned boys still in their teens with no military experience whatsoever. The Spanish annihilate this ragtag mercenary army. Most are killed in battle; those taken prisoner including Lieutenant William Crittendum are executed. However three of the American mercenaries escape …
Meanwhile, black Cubans, some slave and others free, have been convinced by the hacendados that an insurrection against the Spanish will be successful and that support from the americanos is on the way. The hacendados tell the blacks that 5000 americanos are coming to liberate Cuba and free the blacks slaves. These black Cubans are members of the Lukumi Voodoo cult led by the Babaluaye Tolomeo and his nephew, Pedro … characters from Yerby’s novel, Floodtide. Even though the hacendados, themselves are slaveholders, the Lukumi trust the hacendados. The Lukumi smuggle tobacco and other goods for the hacendados … even though the penalty for any Lukumi caught smuggling is death. The hacendados tell Pedro that he will be in charge of the insurrection and that Pedro will lead the americanos and Lukumi in a victorious rebellion against the Spanish. In order to insure their victory, the Babaluaye Tolomeo uses his Voodoo magic to summon Frank Yerby to assist them in their struggle. And so Frank Yerby finds himself, once again, in the middle of a treacherous plot that can only end badly for all involved.
When the Babaluaye Tolomeo brings the news that the americanos have arrived, Pedro and Yerby go out to meet them. But they are too late. They find only three American survivors … who they assist to safety. Pedro’s fiance’, Carlotta, the mother of his unborn child, had pleaded with Pedro not to abandon her for the americanos. Pedro, however, ignores Carlotta’s pleas. And while Pedro is away, the Spanish rape Carlotta. Afterwards they murder her and Pedro’s unborn child. Guilt-ridden, Yerby and Pedro go to America … to the Mississippi plantation of Ross Pary, one of the Americans that they had rescued. Pedro wants to find the reason that he sacrificed Carlotta and his unborn child to save the life of a white Southern slaveholder. Pedro establishes a Lukumi cult on Ross Pary’s Mississippi plantation. And in the end, … despite Yerby pleadings … Pedro finally is able to lead his own slave insurrection.
Part Three
A Sister’s Guilt
Wes Parks, a former African chieftain and a fugitive slave who is the principal character in A Darkness At Ingraham’s Crest is living in Boston when the fugitive slave law of 1850 becomes law. Northerners now are ordered to return all fugitive slaves to the South. Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass redouble their efforts to protect fugitive slaves. They recruit Wes Parks into the Underground Railroad organization. Wes Parks’ Tau Vudum ... his ancestor gods … summon Yerby to Boston.
When Wes Parks escaped his master’s Mississippi plantation, the octoroon twins, Joe and Ellen Collins … whose white father was the plantation master … joined him. Abigail Collins, the plantation master’s white daughter also fled with the party of fugitive slaves. Once in Boston, Abigail married Joe Collins and Ellen Collins married a successful white literary agent, Dwight Ingraham. Both octoroon twins passed for white. However, at a town hall meeting called by the famous abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, to discuss resistance to the newly enacted fugitive slave law, a mysterious mulatto doctor, P. B. Randolph, so captivated Ellen that she resolved to consult with him at his office in upstate New York.
Ellen was considered a stunning beauty. But no man … let alone a ‘black’ man … had ever stirred her passions. Not even her husband, who she greatly admired and respected, ignited the longings that lay dormant inside her body. But this strange man with a dusky hue and regular straight features had looked at her and Ellen burned and her body came alive. Accompanied by Frederick Douglass, Wes Parks and Frank Yerby, Ellen boarded a train in Boston bound for upstate New York and a rendezvous with the sensual P. B. Randolph. Abigail Collins accompanied Ellen ... as did Shields Green, a fugitive slave, that Frederick Douglass and Wes Parks were ‘conducting’ along the underground railroad to the safety of St. Catharines in Ontario.
But as soon as Ellen and her escorts board the train for New York, three slave catchers spot them and follow them to Albany New York. When the opportunity presents itself, the slave catches pounced, seizing both Ellen and Abigail. Ellen, the octoroon, would bring a high price at the slave auction in Charleston. But Abigail, a white woman, was dangerous. Her testimony in a fugitive slave court would not only deprive them of their prize, but could cause their own arrest. The slave catchers decided to dispose of Abigail in a most brutal way by raping and murdering her. Although Ellen was rescued from her captors, she was so overwhelmed by guilt that she deserts her family and joins the St. Catharines fugitive community. There she is recruited by General Ethan Allen Hitchcock to join in the fight against the slavery in the bloody Kansas war.
Abigail’s daughter, Louise Collins, is also recruited for service in Kansas. She is recruited by Caleb Cushing … a close associate of John Quitman … to work for the secessionist cause. William Quantrell becomes Louise’s lover and co-conspirator. In the bitter border war between the Free State Party headquartered in Lawrence Kansas and the Law and Order Vigilance Party which controls the capitol of the Kansas territory at LeCompton, Louise Collins is killed and William Quantrell vows revenge. He captures Ellen and sells her to a slave owner in Missouri. However, Yerby who falls in love with Ellen, organizes a party under the leadership of John Brown to rescue Ellen. The rescue has unforeseen consequences for Frank Yerby as well as for all involved.
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FRANK YERBY: A VICTIM’S GUILT:
PUBLISHER'S BOOK REVIEW
AUTHOR: EUGENE STOVALL
PUBLICATION DATE: January 6, 2006
PUBLISHER: REGENT PRESS
6020A-ADELINE ST
OAKLAND, CA 94608
510-547-7602
ISBN NUMBER: 1-58790-124-2
NUMBER OF PAGES: 460
SOFT COVER PERFECT BINDING
PRICE: $25.95
In his first novel, Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt, Eugene Stovall has given us a brilliant insight into the mind of this controversial African American writer.
Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt is an imaginative work that transports its reader into a world as mysterious and fascinating as Yerby, himself. In this novel, Yerby is challenged to defend one of his oft quoted maxims that victims … rather than being innocent … are guilty of causing their own victimization. Specifically, Yerby says in several of his novels, including Griffin’s Way and Speak Now, that blacks, themselves, were responsible for being enslaved by whites. But in Stovall’s transformational novel, characters from Yerby’s own books snatch Yerby from his deathbed and demand that he recant. Yerby’s characters are driven to act not because of any moral concerns but simply because of their basic desire to exist. For as they tell Frank Yerby, “If you are forgotten, we will fade into oblivion and we cannot permit that to happen.” Because of their urge to live, Yerby’s characters demand that he “fix” the problem that has led to his fading from the literary scene. His characters send Yerby on a mission … one that forces him to confront the same real-life situations in which he had cast them and which led him to pronounce “a victim’s guilt”. Thereupon, Yerby is called to either demonstrate the truth of his belief or abandon it.
At the same time, Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt is more than a clever attempt to familiarize the reading public with another forgotten African-American writer. This book challenges its reader in a manner that is as unexpected as it is profound. The novel forces the reader … regardless of philosophical or religious belief … to consider the relationship between creator and creation and reflect upon the question of how the creator determines a person’s fate. The novel asks the question: can free will overcome fate? In addition, the reader is asked to evaluate the efficacy prayer to the creator in changing one’s fate. In this novel, Stovall dramatizes the human condition in a way that reflects the potency of will immanent in those who are created. Furthermore, Stovall opens to the reader the possibility that the creator is dependent upon his own creation. This reciprocal relationship is so strong in the book, in fact, that by the end Yerby actually falls into a desperate, though futile love with one of his own characters.
In addition, Stovall attempts to follow what Darwin Turner calls Yerby’s ability to ‘debunk historical myth’. Readers who value alternative historical perspectives and counter cultural insights will find a treasury of new ideas in Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt. For example, Stovall introduces his readers to an incident of historical treachery that has been covered up by mainstream historians.
When Lieutenant William Crittendum, scion of one of Kentucky’s first families … a family that has produced a United States Senator and a Secretary of State … travels to Cuba on a filibustering mission, he is captured and executed by the Spanish. Though history says that the young Crittendum died as a young fortune-hunter whose adventure went terribly wrong, Stovall suggests an alternative cause: treachery.
Lieutenant Crittendum was engaged to the young Lucy Holcombe, one of the loveliest and most celebrated of the Southern belles. The two were madly in love. However, another Southerner, Francis Pickens desired the hand of the beautiful Ms. Holcomb. But Pickens, destined to be the governor of South Carolina, was far older than the dashing young Crittendum and had no chance. So the old man sought the assistance of his friend and fellow member of the South’s nullification movement, John Quitman, the Governor of Mississippi. According to Stovall, the principle reason for the filibuster campaign against Cuba in 1851… as well as its failure … was to remove Pickens’ rival for Lucy Holcombe’s hand. Just as David sent Uriah to his death so did Pickens’ with the help of Quitman do the same to William Crittendum who was barely in his twenties. After the death of her fiancé, Lucy Holcombe, indeed, did marry Frances Pickens and was the first lady of South Carolina when Pickens fired upon Fort Sumter to lead South Carolina out of the union and initiate the bloody civil war.
Frank Yerby: A Victim’s Guilt will be the surprise of the season and will certainly provide readers not only with an entertaining story, but also with many thought provoking ideas that will not only ignite the imagination but also spark discussion for some time to come.
Although the publication date was originally set for October 31, 2005, additional editing has the publication date back to January 5, 2006.
The publicity agent for this work is: Peter Handel 825-Page Street Berkeley, CA 94710 510-528-0946
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"The drawn, gaunt patient lay alone in his steel, mechanized bed crowded into a small room. The white walls boasted a solitary black crucifix as the room’s only decoration. The rich, fragrant aroma of a myriad of plants and flowers almost recreated the drab hospital room into a veritable Garden of Eden, appropriately signifying both the beginning as well as the ending of life. When he had first arrived, the patient could escape the narrow confines of his room by sitting outside in the patio attached to his room. The patio marked the patient’s wealth and rank. Now all he could do was gaze eastward in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, the coast of his adopted land that ancient African desert dwellers had called Iberia. And Frank Yerby knew he would never again see his beloved Spain, the land of Iberia that he and his wife… Blanca…called home, again. The door opened and into the room strode a young woman dressed in white with a funny little starched hat perched on top of her curly, brown hair."
And so begins this book on Frank Yerby...a book that follows Frank Yerby's retracing to the origin of his own disbelief in God. In Stovall's imaginary tale, Yerby accepts his own blasphemy against God as the reason for a lack of recognition after the production of such a brilliant body of work. To produce this work Yerby was forced from home and country, ending his life as emigre in Spain. Yerby not only rejected America's racism, but he alienated himself from black people as well. This alienation from his own people is the fundamental cause of his problem. So, in order not to fade into obscurity, Yerby must become one with his own creations...his words becoming flesh...and make amends for his blasphemy as well as his rejection of black people.
Yerby's desire to make amends is not driven by Yerby's own deathbed need for redemption. Yerby is agnosticism's most articulate spokesman. He regales in his freedom from the mind numbing fear that death inspires in most people. Yerby believes that fear of death that caused man to create gods. No ... it is not fear that drives Yerby to seek redemption. What drives Yerby's desire for his own redemption is his creation, the characters from his novels. They tell him that they want to live. Furthermore they have a responsibility to his characters not to fade into obscurity. In "FRANK YERBY; A VICTIM'S GUILT", Yerby's characters kidnap Yerby's soul and he remains with them until he can bring his characters back to life. Lady Sumayla is assisted by Abraham Abulafia and his knowledge of kabalism to captureYerby's soul. Pedro brings Yerby to Cuba using Voodoo rituals. In these and other adventures, Yerby is forced to struggle alongside of his characters as they struggle against their predestined fates ... fates that Yerby, himself, gave them. And in his struggle, Yerby is forced to face his most deeply held belief: the "victim's guilt". And in this confrontation, Yerby as well as his characters must sort out the mysteries that confront us all. In this novel, the cataclysmic struggles which Yerby so dearly loved offers the enjoyable reading for which Frank Yerby was famous
All of these themes and views find there way into "Frank Yerby: A VICTIM'S GUILT". The book finds a source of evil embedded in the intense racial and sexual prejudice so prevalent in the development of western civilization as well in the belief that man is God.
COVER DESIGN: RAYMOND HOLBERT
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