Frank Yerby: A Victim's Guilt, a Transformative Novel.

Frank Yerby: A Victim's Guilt, A Transformative Novel by Eugene A. Stovall Regent Press, February 2006 $25.95, ISBN 1-587-90124-2

Imagine an author captured and hauled into his own narrative entanglements by his characters who are not especially pleased with their fate. That is exactly the situation in Frank Yerby: A Victim's Guilt, an odd but interesting new work. For those unfamiliar with Yerby, he was a real-life African American writer best known for his historical romances--those lushly detailed, intricately plotted novels so loved by the reading public. By his death in 1991, Yerby had written 33 of these novels and had sold more than 55 million books.

According to Stovall, Yerby was a real piece of work--arrogant, smug and condescending toward women and fellow African Americans. The most damning charge, however, is that Yerby felt that blacks somehow deserved the treatment they received because they behaved like victims. The characters in his novels--women, blacks and other presumed victims--decide to give Yerby a dose of his own medicine, steeping him in the situations he created for them.

In the hands of a more skilled writer, Frank Yerby: A Victim's Guilt could have been a better novel. There are numerous factual errors, a great deal of ineffective writing and far too many editorial glitches that keep the novel from being altogether enjoyable. On the whole, though, it is a wonderful idea for a book and Yerby does get his just deserts.

--Reviewed by Warren J. Carson Warren J. Carson, Ph.D., is assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina Upstate.