The House Behind the Cedars - Paperback

by Charles W. Chesnutt (Author)

Charles Chesnutt was perhaps the most influential African-American fiction writer during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The House Behind the Cedars, his dramatic masterpiece, was crafted during the tumultuous post-Civil War era in the South, when many in white society feared the evils of interracial relationships. Boldly, with vivid detail and memorable characters, this novel explores the practice of passing, as John and Rena Walden, two light-skinned African Americans, step over the color line to share in the American Dream.
Conceived by a novelist who himself had once considered passing, The House Behind the Cedars continues as one of the bravest, most compelling, and most important explorations of racism in American fiction.

Author Biography

One of America's first great African-American novelists, Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) exposed the harsh dimensions of Southern prejudice before and after the Civil War. Powerful and passionate, his novels present richly imagined characters, both black and white, striving to make better lives for themselves.