Lucifer laughed, shook his head, and warned them, “Come with me while you can. What you’re asking for is more than a revolution, it’s a question ... a denial...”
ANGEL'S ORACLE
Gary Bolick
Southern Literary Historical Fantasy
Angel, Mississippi's one claim to fame is an unusual natural phenomenon known to the local blacks as Moses' Rock, and to everyone else, Angel's Oracle. The singing rock nestled in the ground deep in the back woods is rumored to be the source of the Four Winds - Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Almost everyone in Angel has a story to tell about the Oracle, and many believe it holds mystical secrets to be revealed and heard only when the wind blows.
But a hard-working albino white man in 1959 has a special history with Angel's Oracle. And over a three-day Easter weekend, he comes to realize many things, the least of which is that he fits in better with the ‘coloreds’ than he does with his own ‘white folk.’
With gritty realism and wondrous mysticism, Angel’s Oracle focuses on the microcosm of Angel, Mississippi – America from 1859 to 1959 to the present. Angel’s Oracle tells the story of free will, race relations, religion’s influence on capitalism, the love of one brother for another, and the power of myth, religion, and history to shape love and hate, and to sway man toward failure and redemption. It is a lesson hard won and not easily forgotten.
