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Review of Behold, This Dreamer published in: First Draft: The Journal of the Alabama Writers Forum, Winter 2001

Behold, This Dreamer:
A Novel

Charlotte Miller
NewSouth Books, 2000
512pp. Cloth, $27.95

Although much recent fiction set in the South has focused on racial issues, class distinctions among whites have also produced their share of injustice. No matter how hard-working he was, no small farmer could hold out for long against a wealthy planter who owned the cotton mill, the gin, and the bank. If he refuesed to accept the planter's dictates, he was likely to lose his land and perhaps even his life. When he sees Walter Eason destroy his father, Janson Sanders resolves some day to make things right. Unfortunately, perhaps because of his Cherokee good looks and his proud bearing, Janson attracts upper-class girls, thereby setting himself up to be slaughtered by their brothers and fathers.

It is his dalliance with Walter Eason's flapper granddaughter that makes it necessary for Janson to flee his Alabama home even more precipitously than he had intended. In Georgia, Janson works hard and saves his money, supplementing what he earns legally with a bit of bootlegging. However, again an upper-class young woman enters his life, and this time the encounter is not a casual one. Janson and his employer's daughter, Elise Whitley, soon realize that dispite their many differences, they are deeply in love. When their liaison is discovered, they fear that they will have to part forever, but then they find help from an unexpected source. The book ends with Janosn on his way to realizing his dreams.

Behold, This Dreamer is a faithful representation of the twenties as seen from the vantage point of a class too often ignored in contemporary fiction. In Janson Sanders, with his fierce independence, his sense of self, and his love of the land, the author has created a hero worthy to represent the embattled farmers who have done so much to build this nation.

Rosemary Canfield Reisman is a former professor and chair of the English Department at Troy State University. She is now visiting professor at Charleston Southern University

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