Sweetbitter Author:Reginald Gibbons Reuben S. Sweetbitter, half Choctaw, half white. Set around the turn of the century, the story focuses on the protagonist's experience of racism. — When his mother dies as they're heading west from Mississippi, young Reuben must make his own way in the world and eventually lands in East Texas. There, he learns that he fits in nowhere-neit... more »her among Indians nor "coloreds," and certainly not among whites. Trouble is assured when, in 1910, Reuben falls in love with Martha Clarke, the white daughter of a local lawyer.
Threatened with a lynching for their act of miscegenation, the couple flees. For a time, they live in peace, but the pursuit by whites bent on racial purity never stops and, finally, an inevitable day of reckoning arrives.« less
Excellent book. Demonstrates the evil of racism and the way it has been capable of destroying it's victims. Nineteenth century Texas is the background for this story of love and hate.