Patrick D. Smith, award-winning author of A Land Remembered, Forever Island, and other classic novels about Mississippi and Florida, wrote The Beginning in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement. He offered an inside perspective on its effect on the people, both black and white, caught in the upheaval of the changing South. Now a new generation of readers can reassess the times and the decisions of those who lived through them.

The Beginning, published by Pineapple Press, as Patrick Smith’s other books are, has just been re-released, about which, Pineapple’s Publisher, David Cussin, says, “We decided to re-issue The Beginning due to popular demand. Sometime after it was first published we let it go out of stock, but recently so many readers began asking for the book we decided that a re-issue was in order.”

David Cussin continues, “So many people kept pestering us to re-issue we simply decided we should go ahead and reprint. In this business we have to meet a certain level before reprinting and so when that level was reached, we decided it was time to reprint.”

This reprint is a handsome soft back edition of the original, 324 pages. About The Beginning, The Clarion Ledger of Mississippi, wrote: “Of all the books written in the decade of the 1960s about the Civil Rights movement, Patrick Smith has turned out the most vivid and most violent and most accurate reflection of the times.”

The author himself, Patrick Smith, says, “I’m so happy to see this book, The Beginning, come back in print because I hope people today will realize what the novel is saying about race relations a long time ago. Things have changed. However, it still would be helpful for people to know how they really were at one time.”

About that particular time in our history, Mr. Smith writes, “Midvale, where the book is set, is an imaginary small town in southern Mississippi. In the 1960s life moves at a pace set by its long, hot summers and its dirt-poor economy. The African Americans know their place and pretty much keep to it in “the quarters,” a dilapidated section of the little town. The whites, mostly merchants and farmers, know their place too, living quiet, family-oriented lives. A reasonably friendly atmosphere generally prevails in this segregated society... until Washington begins passing new laws, and a current of unrest ripples through town as a few blacks, for the first time, register to vote...

“An outstanding novel, as true a picture of Southern racial relations to be found.” — The Mississippi Press.

The first edition of The Beginning was published in 1967. Now, over forty years later, it is available again. Patrick Smith’s A Land Remembered has become a tradition throughout Florida and much of the south. Both these novels are now offered as soft back editions.

From the Introduction of The Beginning: Most of the civil rights workers who invaded the South in the 1960s came with a sincere desire to help, but there were also those who came masquerading as civil rights workers and seeking only adventure. Some of their actions opened wounds that will take generations to heal, if ever.

Much has changed in the South and the nation since those turbulent times a few decades ago, but much change is yet to come — especially in the heart of the people, both white and black. Perhaps enough time has now passed so that readers can view The Beginning as what it was intended to be: a look into a changing South where even issues of relations between races were not simply black and white but as complex as the motivations within the human heart.

The Beginning is available by mail. Send check or money order for $16.95 plus postage $2.58 plus tax $1.02 for a total of $20.55 to Barbara Oehlbeck, 1388 Grassy Run, LaBelle, Fl. 33935. On orders out of Florida there is no tax. All orders filled promptly.