Barbara Giles

Published in 1947, The Gentle Bush is an exploration of class and privilege along a south-central Louisiana bayou from the period immediately after Reconstruction through the early 20th century, or about 20 years. The story is told through the eyes of a young member of the landed gentry planter class, owners of a sugar cane plantation along the banks of the Bayou Teche. Slavery has been gone for decades, yet a black field worker can still be tracked down and shot for "running off." The relation between the old planter families, the Cajun population and the blacks of the area is the real meat here. Our protagonist, Michel, has from boyhood rebelled against the hatred and cruelty with which the planters treat their black workers.

The story got going slowly, I thought, with lots of exposition, but eventually it became fairly absorbing, as Michel's interactions with his family, and with his friend, Peter, a Cajun struggling to rise above the prescribed societal slot for people his ethnicity, become more heated.

Through online research I learned that Barbara Giles was a relatively prominent member of the Leftist/Communist movement of the post-WW2 era. Having read that, it came as no surprise to me that this novel is at heart an exploration of class consciousness and that the book ends with a polemic. One might fairly say that this book is at least as interesting as an historical artifact than for the story itself. As I've mentioned previously here on LT, the book is listed in only three LT libraries: one is mine and one of the other two is Carl Sandburg's! For all those reasons, I'm glad I read this.… (plus d'informations)