Title: The cattle killing
First published: 1996
Description: In plague-ridden eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a young black itinerant preacher searches for a mysterious, endangered African woman. His struggle to find her and save them both plummets him into the nightmare of a society violently splitting itself into white and black, white over black.

Spiraling outward from its core image of the Xhosa people's ritual destruction of their herd in a vain attempt to resist European domination - the cattle killing - the novel expands its narrator's search for meaning and love into the America, England, and South Africa of yesterday and today.
Subjects: Fiction, Race relations, Africans, Afro-American families, African American clergy, Afro-Americans, African American families, African Americans, Afro-American clergy, History, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, historical, general
Places: Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States, Philadelphia (Pa.)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: PS3573.I26 C38 1996