[Review of The House Behind the Cedars]

-–Another story by a rising young colored author, Charles W. Chesnutt, who has already published two successful books, is The House Behind the Cedars. It is a powerful presentation of the old tragedy: that of a young woman, to all appearances a Caucasian, but with the fatal drop of Negro blood. How, attempting to escape the curse of caste, she goes to a new community and wins the love of a proud young white man, how the discovery shakes his resolve though it cannot change his heart, and the disasters which follow are portrayed here with no common literary skill. That slavery was as great a curse to the white man as to the black is shown most forcibly. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.50.)