John Bentley Mays's unexpected homecoming to the South was precipitated by the death of his elderly Aunt Vandalia and the inheritance of a southern home filled with family treasures and memories. Living in Canada, Mays had gradually lost touch with his southern heritage.
Now, suddenly finding himself back in the land of his forebears, he was struck by an urge to rediscover his roots, and the southern experience, by tracing his family line back over its 400 years in the American South. Power in the Blood is an evocative journey through the landscape of his ancestors and kin: small towns of Louisiana and South Carolina and the colonial plantations and forests of Virginia.
Through the lens of his family's past, Mays reveals the culture and history that permeates the land. An honest exploration into one family's experience of the American South, Power in the Blood marks the astonishing American debut of a writer of uncommon caliber.
