John Walden left his mother’s house behind the cedars in Patesville, North Carolina, changed his name to Warwick and made his way as a white lawyer in South Carolina. Returning after the war, he persuades his beautiful sister Rena to join him, and her courtship by the aristocratic George Tryon puts their secret, and her happiness, at risk.
Chesnutt’s 1900 novel was among the first by a Black American writer to confront passing and the colour line head-on. Download the free EPUB.