The Cromptons

"The Cromptons" by Mary Jane Holmes is a book set in the early 1900s, exploring how different people relate to each other, especially when social class and race make things complicated. A mysterious newcomer from the North shows up in a Southern town and meets Eudora, who lives in a simple home in a palmetto bush area where Jake, who is black, is a free man and Mandy Ann, who is black, is a slave girl. A stranger gets off of the steamer "Hatty" and meets Tom Hardy, a friend. Some other people are on the steamer, but they don't seem to know each other. He stands out because he is curious about Mandy Ann, which links him to the main group of people in town. Mandy Ann runs away from a stranger, and this shows how difficult society is. He misses a girl, so he searches for a house in the palmetto bushes where Eudora lives, suggesting a story about private desires mixed with social pressure in the South.