The Prodigal Judge
by Vaughan Kester
Category: American fiction

"The Prodigal Judge is set in Tennessee during the term of President Jackson. This was a time when the area was changing from a lawless rugged area to a more civilized urban culture. Judge Price is a southern man full of courage and chivalry. The story begins, The Quintards had not prospered on the barren lands of the pine woods whither they had emigrated to escape the malaria of the low coast, but this no longer mattered, for the last of his name and race, old General Quintard, was dead in the great house his father had built almost a century before and the thin acres of the Barony, where he had made his last stand against age and poverty, were to claim him, now that he had given up the struggle in their midst. The two or three old slaves about the place, stricken with a sense of the futility of the fight their master had made, mourned for him and for themselves, but of his own blood and class none was present."--Goodreads