Honey Gal

About This Book

Published in 1958 by Beacon Books under the title Honey Gal — the author's preferred title was The Black Mass of Brother Springer — this novel by Charles Willeford (1919–1988) follows the Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer, a white middle-aged man from Columbus, Ohio, who finds himself ministering to a Black congregation in rural Florida. Willeford used the premise to write one of the earliest American novels to engage directly with the civil rights upheaval following the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Beacon marketed the book with a lurid cover and taglines promising interracial scandal, but the novel contains no sex scenes — it is instead a sharp, bleak study of race, religion, and self-deception in the segregated South. Willeford, a career Army man and decorated World War II tank commander, is best known for the Hoke Moseley detective series beginning with Miami Blues (1984).

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