AUTHOR’S NOTE
Because I believe that regional literature, even though it be avowedly fictional, should be unequivocal in its identification with its locale, I have not hesitated in this novel to apply the correct names to the city, streets, and outlying districts of which I write. Lest this course should lead the reader into confusing the narrative with either history or biography, I desire to stress the fact that the work is purely imaginative and is concerned only with certain social and spiritual values existing in Charleston and its environs. For the purposes of the novel the material has been subjected to an intense synthesis. Thus the phosphate mining camp stands not merely as an exposition of an isolated industry, but as a focal point for the drawing together of a number of mental attitudes and incidents typical of the industrial black belt. With the exception of allusions to people whose correct names are used, and who will be readily recognized, the characters who appear in the book are fictional creations and are not intended as representations of actual characters either living or dead.
Du Bose Heyward.
Charleston, South Carolina,
October, 1928.