It does not take long for Big Mama’s house to turn into a pile of burning embers, and Denver Moore sits next to it and wonders why God took away the person he loved the most. Soon someone comes to take him and his brother Thurman to live in Grand Bayou with BB, their father. Moore did not know him very well, and even now he does not know what BB did for a living. Perhaps he worked for the railroad, since he made enough money to buy a two-door Pontiac.

BB is a big man who keeps three or four women “on a string at the same time.” He never goes to church because some of his women are married and they are at church with their husbands on Sundays. Instead, he and his boys attend church like they would a drive-in movie. BB pulls the car right next to the church, and the pastor always opens a window on that side of the building so they can hear the service. When the congregation sings “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” Moore hopes that means God has Chook and Big Mama in His hands.

The sermons are always about sin and forgiveness, and the congregation always is enthusiastic about what the preacher has to say. After the sermon, the choir sings again and then the offering plate is passed around and finally out the window. BB always drops in a few coins and passes it back inside. Moore and his brother only live with their father for a few weeks before BB leaves one night and never comes home.

One version of the story is that he had car trouble; another is that he was kidnapped. But either way, BB was parked by the side of the road when a man came out of the woods and stabbed him to death. Someone said it was the husband of one of BB’s women; Moore wonders if it was one of the men who worshipped with them on Sundays.

The next day, James Stickman, the boys’ uncle, arrives to pick them up in his wagon and takes them to the farm where he and his wife Etha sharecrop. Sharecropping is a new form of slavery, only the croppers serve two masters. One is the Man who owns the land and the other is the man who owns the store where they get their supplies on credit.

The Man always wants his croppers to plant more crops and less food so he can make more money. No matter how much cotton is planted and baled, the croppers are always in debt to the landowner and forced to stay another year to pay it off; even worse, the landowners tell everyone else that sharecroppers destroy everything they get. This adds to the already negative stereotype of blacks as being lazy and not very bright.

Uncle James does not endure this treatment for long, and after three years he moves his family to a plantation where he can “get a better deal.” They work hard there, and Big Mama’s sister, Moore’s great-aunt, also works on this plantation. All he ever calls her is “Auntie” because he is somewhat afraid of her, especially after the time she made it rain.

Moore’s entire family works in the fields until Aunt Etha goes back to the house at noon to cook dinner. While the women cook inside the houses, the men cook in their corn-liquor stills hidden in the woods. Blacks and whites each consume the moonshine, and everyone who can manage it has a still.

Aunt Etha can...