A Dash of King's Yellow

DOUBLE MUSCADINE (335 pp.)--Frances Gaither--Macmlllan ($3.50).

In the old South, double muscadine was a bedspread design, named for the leaf of the scuppernong-wine grape. "Rench" was the word for rinse, and "wropping" was the method of braiding pickaninny pigtails. In Mississippi at least, a perjured slave was subject to "have both your ears nailed to the pillory, and cut off, and receive thirty-nine lashes on your bare back, well laid on, at the common whipping post." Then as now, a cockleburr was regarded as a bad thing to get under a saddle.

These are among the fresher things that Double Muscadine has to say. The rest of the 335 pages reveal (in the words of the jacket) how "Martha ... a mere slip of a girl. . . began to learn the things about her husband that so many Southern women in slavery days had to know and bear in silence." Mississippian Kirk McLean is not only "downright fond" of scuppernong wine, he is also the father of at least two quadroons. One day a disgruntled and sulking yellow girl flavors the family tea with a dash of king's yellow, or orpiment, an arsenious pigment. Somebody dies, and the girl is brought to trial.

The Book-of-the-Month Club, which picked Mississippi-raised Frances Gaither's novel as its March selection, can reasonably expect that thousands of readers will plug right along until they find out whether the yellow girl gets off or not. Before they get through, however, a good many who order this one will understand the words of Kirk's plain-spoken sister-in-law: "There ain't a mite of use of dodging pain. [God will] hand you the cup, and then you got to dreen it . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.