Negro Tales

“Cursed in Caleb,” his father says—and Caleb answers with a blow to the heart. In Joseph S. Cotter’s opening tale, one family’s bitter argument turns, in an instant, into a reckoning no one can easily escape.

Negro Tales gathers early-twentieth-century stories of African American life, where hardship and human frailty meet in moments of humor, grief, and sharp moral consequence. In “Caleb,” Patsy and Benjamin look back on their marriages and fear what their only son has become; Caleb, meanwhile, seems to hear every rebuke as permission to despise those around him. With a funeral to face and old beliefs weighing on the family, Patsy turns to Rahab, the teacher whose words helped shape Caleb’s view of himself. Can anyone reach him before the family’s wounds deepen?

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