Double Muscadine Author:Frances Gaither Commentary courtesy of Ronald L. Davis at: — http://mlsandy.home.tsixroads.com/Corinth_MLSANDY/mw003.html — Mrs. Gaither's last novel, DOUBLE MUSCADINE, is the most carefully constructed and suspenseful of all her novels. Perhaps this fact accounts for its being chosen a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1949. More importantly, however, the nov... more »el is Mrs. Gaither's most telling indictment of slavery. The reader witnesses not the economic decline of the plantation, as in FOLLOW THE DRINKING GOURD, not the threat of a slave rebellion, as in THE RED COCK CROWS, but the collapse of a family's inner life. Both Blacks and whites are portrayed objectively.The reader is forced not to make the easy assumption that either group is "responsible" for the deaths and the suffering that occur. The real villain is the system of slavery, the code that the white community blindly accepts and that perverts the best qualities of its members.« less