Jonah's Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1934; New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.

As a child, young John lives in Notasulga, Alabama, with his mother, step-father, and two step-brothers, but tension between him and his step-father results in his running away to the other side of Big Creek, where he is to seek asylum on the plantation of Alf Pearson, whom he will discover is his birth father, the man who had owned his mother before the surrender. John then grows into a young man—going to school, discovering girls, and falling in love with young, smart Lucy Potts. Because Lucy sings in the choir of Macedony Baptist Church, John develops an interest in religion in order to spend time in her company. But Lucy is still a child herself, so John passes the years he must wait for her back home with his mother, cutting cross-ties, and biding his time away from the temptations of other girls. When the time is right, John returns and boldly asks her parents for permission to court her. With their first kiss, John proposes marriage. Though John loves only Lucy, he continues to fool around repeatedly with women who tempt him. As the years pass, Lucy gives birth to three sons and a daughter.

After a fling of infidelity, John throws himself on the mercy of Lucy and the church. He prays so fervently that others who hear him mark him as a natural-born preacher. A fight with Lucy's brother, though, makes it necessary for John to leave town on a train headed to central Florida. On this ride, he is dazzled by the wonder of the train and his good fortune to be riding the rails amidst the splendor and glory of the “greatest accumulation of power he had ever seen” (104).

Upon arrival, John gets work at once laying railroad ties, and moves on to other jobs, but he takes almost a year to send for Lucy and the children. He does so after he hears about Eatonville, Florida, an all-black community; this is where he wants to settle with his family. John acknowledges his call to the ministry and becomes the preacher at Zion Hope in Sanford and the mayor of Eatonville. The family grows to seven children, but John's bouts of infidelity continue, even when his younger daughter Isis contracts typhoid. It is Lucy who grieves and waits bedside while John finds another woman to help him forget his own pain. The people of John's church show concern about his womanizing, but it is Lucy who stands by him, advising him on how to allay their concerns. Hattie, one of the women who bring John comfort, visits An' Dangie Dewoe, whom Hattie pays to send a hex on John and Lucy's relationship. John and Lucy begin to bicker, and for the first time in the whole of their love life together, John delivers a “resounding smack” (129) to Lucy. She soon takes to her bed and within days she is dead.

In the midst of weeping sadness, Lucy's funeral takes place. John realizes he is now a free man, on the other side of guilt: “he was glad in his sadness” (136). All too soon, John marries Hattie Tyson, but it takes seven years into his marriage before John suddenly wakes up to the discovery that he has been under a spell. John and Hattie enter into a physically abusive stage, in which Hattie tries to remove John from his church, but his hold is too tight. When he finds all the evidence he needs of the hoodoo spells Hattie has placed on him, he beats her severely when she returns home. The next day, she files for divorce, hoping to prove adultery so that he will lose his church. The day in court comes, and Hattie's side reveals enough witnesses to condemn John, whose only response is to admit to it all, without divulging that Hattie had also been unfaithful because he “didn't want de white folk tuh hear 'bout nuthin lak dat” (169). John knows he is in trouble with his church, but he preaches the sermon on this Sunday, concludes, and walks out the door of Zion Hope. After seventeen years, he has preached his last sermon there, but he leaves on his terms, of his own free will.

He now needs distance from Sanford and all of its associations. He finds himself in Plant City doing carpentry for a woman named Sally, who recognizes him from his days as a church leader. John marries her, grateful and restored in his memories to Lucy, the one true love of his life. John pays a visit to Sanford and Zion Hope in the new Cadillac Sally bought him. His old church wants to recall him, but John appears to have turned over a new leaf; he is thankful to Sally for coming to him when he most needed support. By the end of the chapter, though, John has once again slipped back to his old ways with another woman. Upon waking, John is horrified that he has fallen yet again and rushes back to Sally. He never sees the train that hits his new car squarely and throws him from it. Sally is pleased to believe that he had always been true to her, and attends memorial services for him in twenty cities.

Mules and Men. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1935; New York: Library of America, 1995. 1-267.

Franz Boas, Hurston's professor and mentor and one of the nation's leading anthropologists, wrote the forward for this collection of folklore. He points out that distinguishing this volume is the author's ability to be one of the community, one who has the advantage of listening and recording from the inside. Hurston's delivery of the folktales she has heard from an early age establishes her as an authority more reliable than any preceding white observers.

In the first part of the book, Hurston presents her collection of seventy folktales arranged in ten chapters in chronological order according to her collecting trip. As Hurston arrives in the town she always refers to as home, Eatonville, Florida, she introduces various people and as they come in contact with her, she has them tell her stories, or “lies” as they are called. A chapter, therefore, is a collection of what she hears on a given night and may include children's games and songs woven among the lies. The chapter ends when the night of partying comes to an end. When Eatonville lies are told out by the end of chapter three, Hurston moves on to Polk County for chapters four through ten—a different venue with new storytellers.

Hurston takes up residence at a saw-mill camp in Loughman where she falls into the company of a group of characters, among them Big Sweet, who becomes Hurston's protector. From these characters she hears tales of Ole Massa (the white man) and John (the black man, who is always the winner in any game of wits), new verses to the song “John Henry,” and animal tales that explain how things got to be the way they are, how other things almost happened. An example of the latter category is “How the Woodpecker Nearly Drowned the Whole World”: when Noah was aboard the ark with all of his collections of twos, the woodpecker noticed there were no trees available, so he began to peck the ark. Noah told him to stop or they would all drown. The woodpecker sought to peck Noah, who came after the woodpecker with a hammer. The woodpecker's head is red from the blood caused by Noah's blow with the hammer, but the world did not drown.

Hurston relates the tales in the voices of the various people she introduces. Enhancing the tales are spontaneous, irreverent conversations that occur on walks to the swamp, on drives to the jook joints, and in plans with Big Sweet about the evening's itinerary. A tale may also be preceded by attention called to a children's game, a full explanation of Florida flip or Georgia skin game, or the ongoing saga of the antagonism between Big Sweet and Lucy and Ella—who want to knife each other—and Hurston. At a jook joint one evening a fight breaks out among the women and Hurston's life is threatened. Big Sweet covers for her while Hurston literally makes a run for the door, a leap into her car, and a departure into the night. Hurston's collecting in this locale comes to an abrupt halt.

The second part of the book focuses on Hurston's involvement with hoodoo in New Orleans, a city that she refers to as “the hoodoo capital of America” (176). In seven chapters, she introduces a variety of “two-headed” doctors, the name given to those men and women who practice the secrets of this private ritual for good or harm. Hurston is initiated into the practice and explains the power of the snakeskin cover upon which she lay in silence for three days, mentions the five psychic experiences she has, receives the name “Rain-Bringer,” and regrets having to decline an offer to take possession of the business after the hoodoo doctor's death. From another hoodoo doctor she learns the ritual of obtaining the Black Cat Bone, necessary for becoming invisible. Still from others, she learns the secrets of herbs and scents, and reading the cards. She writes of ghosts, of ritual frenzied dancing, of special baths, of animals buried alive, and of participating in rituals meant to cause someone's marital break-up, someone's increased affections, or even death itself. Hurston does not report on the success or failure of the requests of people who seek out hoodoo specialists; she simply reports the activity of working the spell. In order to report expertly on hoodoo, Hurston gave herself to the study from the inside, which meant she first had to win the trust of practitioners who would be skeptical of strangers. The book concludes with a variety of songs with the music, a glossary of terms to understand the language of folktales, standard formulas of hoodoo doctors, and necessary equipment and prescriptions for conjures.

Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1937; New York: Perennial Classics, 1998.

As Their Eyes Were Watching God begins, Janie Woods returns to the all-black town that thinks they know her well. The townsfolk are gathered on the porch where they engage nightly in big talk, so when Janie passes by with only a brief greeting, they are left hungry for her story. Janie's best friend, Pheoby Watson, follows shortly after her to hear what the townsfolk are desperate to know. Delighted to see Pheoby again, Janie, not quite sure where to begin the telling of her story, starts with her early days. She begins with Nanny, the grandmother who raised her after the disappearance of her mother Leafy, who had Janie as the result of being raped by her schoolteacher. When Janie has her first kiss over the back fence, Nanny reacts with a fierce desire to protect Janie from the world as Nanny understands it, and arranges for Janie to be married to an old man with property named Logan Killicks. Nanny tells Janie the story of the colored woman's role as “the mule of the world.” She knows she will die soon and wants to pass her dreams on to Janie.

Janie and Logan get married, and Janie, whose imagination has earlier been ignited by the bee that pollinates the pear blossom, decides a marriage must be similar. When Janie discovers that love does not follow in her marriage to Logan, she watches her first dream die. All too soon, Janie meets Joe Starks, a man with big plans off in the horizon about an all-colored town in Florida. After a brief flirtation, Janie chooses to cast her lot with Joe and meets him in the early hours, thinking that he could well be the “bee for her bloom.” Without divorce from Logan, Janie marries Joe Starks before sundown on their way to the all-colored town, Eatonville, which will be her home for the next twenty years. Upon arriving, Joe buys some land and shares his vision of the future with others. He becomes a powerful leader almost from the moment he appears on the scene. He employs others to help him build a store and a big house. When the townsfolk begin to gather on the porch routinely, Joe makes it clear to Janie that she is not one of the common people and sets her apart from them. In so doing, he isolates her. While Joe is center stage, she feels lonely.

Janie realizes that the plan she thought would play out in their lives together is not to be, so she separates her inside and outside selves. Over the years, the distance and the silence grow between Janie and Joe. When Janie visits him on his death bed, he turns a deaf ear towards her, but she will have her say. She lets him know that their life together did not have to be the way it turned out, that after these twenty years, he does not know her after all. He dies, but her grief is only an outer grief. She has lived two lives—the inner and outer ones—too long.

Janie goes through the motions at Joe's funeral. Over time, though, her inner and outer selves begin to merge as she comes to enjoy her freedom. She begins to share in the talk on the porch. She is not interested in the advice from men about what she ought to do with the store, the house, and her life. As she begins to care less about what other people say about her, she relishes the honesty she feels in her daily living. One day when Janie is in the store alone, a tall stranger comes in, teaches her to play checkers, and spends the day. He introduces himself as Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods. Treating her as his equal, he helps her close the store and walks her home. She feels as though she has known him forever. Tea Cake courts Janie, and he becomes the bee to her blossom. Only this time that thought, which Janie has had twice before, is accompanied by laughter, by honesty, and by equality.

Acting without the permission of the town, she asserts control over her own life and decides to marry Tea Cake in Jacksonville, but their decision to head for the muck of the Everglades will prove to be fateful as well as fatal. Once they have set up housekeeping, Janie joins Tea Cake in harvesting the beans in the field. She works beside him, not behind him, because they enjoy being together. He, in turn, helps with dinner upon their return home in the evening. He also teaches her to shoot a gun, and she becomes the better shot. The two of them become the center of life and laughter on the muck, and they decide to stay for the off-season.

When Indians and animals leave the muck, a sure sign that a hurricane is on the way, Tea Cake refuses chances to leave. But the wind and the rain prove too powerful for them, so, in the midst of the storm, they decide to walk and swim out of the muck. Tea Cake has to abandon the guitar that he loves to play, as he and Janie are taxed to their physical limits in trying to escape from the hurricane. When Janie finds momentary rescue on the back of a cow, she is surprised by a rabid dog. As the dog leaps to attack her, Tea Cake plunges his knife into the dog, but before Tea Cake can successfully kill the dog, he is bitten on the face. In the aftermath of the storm, the turmoil of burying the dead pushes aside Janie's plan for Tea Cake to see a doctor about that dog bite. Within weeks, the poison has gone to Tea Cake's brain and now, too late for the life-saving serum to work, the doctor lets Janie know the end is near for Tea Cake. In a sudden turn of events, Tea Cake turns a gun on Janie, who has to kill Tea Cake in order to save her own life. Sympathy for Janie abounds and justice is merciful and swift. On the day of Tea Cake's death, she is jailed, but with amazing speed, she goes to trial, and a jury of all-white men declares her innocent after a five-minute discussion. The funeral she organizes for Tea Cake is huge, expensive, and lavish, and her reasons are twofold: for his friends, from whom she must curry good will, for above all she does not want any misunderstanding about Tea Cake's death; and for herself, as Tea Cake was indeed the bee to her blossom. She loved him, and she loves him still.

Life on the muck without Tea Cake is too painful, so after a time of nurturing good will with their friends, Janie leaves. Her return to Eatonville, where the novel began, marks the end of her story to Pheoby. It is now Pheoby's responsibility to tell Janie's story to those who wait on the porch; Janie is tired and goes up to bed with thoughts of Tea Cake, who will be with her as long as she herself is not finished thinking of him. She has been to the horizon; finally, she knows life and love.

Tell My Horse. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938; New York: Library of America, 1995.

Hurston's second and final volume of her work in the field reflects her time outside of the United States. Tell My Horse is divided into three parts: moving from Jamaica, to a brief history of Haiti, and concluding with her experiences with voodoo as practiced by the people of Haiti. The book contains twenty-six photographs, many of voodoo rituals, and an appendix of voodoo songs. From her stay in Jamaica, Hurston reports on native obsessions, superstitions, practices, and beliefs. She concludes her report on Jamaica with an account of the ongoing mistreatment of women, giving examples of their lack of recourse and the prevailing superiority of men.

In the section on the history of Haiti, Hurston recounts the early days of fighting and death, explaining the parallel situation that exists between the black and the educated mulattoes. Through assassinations, revolutions, kingdoms established and abolished, and a nineteen-year military occupation by United States Marines, Hurston depicts Haiti's instability.

In the final section on voodoo, Hurston explains the classes of deities or loa and recounts an invitation to Archahaie, which she identifies as “the greatest place known in Haiti for Voodoo” (402). With an abundance of photographs, Hurston takes the reader through ceremonies to the voodoo gods, the sacrifice of animals—wringing of chickens' necks and burying dogs alive. Both good and evil gods are called upon, for each has a specific function that can be seen as helpful to the faithful followers. Hurston tells of meeting a zombie, a person who has been called back from the dead but is now a body without a soul. She moves to the festivities of celebration, singing, and dancing, and just as quickly leaves that ritual to explain the deadly poison of graveyard dirt, of the chopped hair of a horse's tail, the whiskers from the head of a leopard, and the poisonous qualities in the gall bladder of an alligator. She concludes with the power of the pintard, a guinea fowl with enough joyfulness in it to seduce even God himself, for it is the bearer of music and laughter.

Moses, Man of the Mountain. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1939; New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.

To coincide with the forty years the biblical Israelites spend wandering in the wilderness, Hurston weaves a double story of Moses in forty chapters—the biblical Moses and the Moses of black folklore, the greatest hoodoo doctor of them all. The decree has gone out from Pharaoh that Hebrew boys will be killed at birth. Amram's wife Jochebed gives birth to a male, so they know to place him in a basket on the Nile. Miriam, the baby's sister, is sent to watch over him as he floats away, but falling asleep, she makes up the story that the Pharaoh's daughter has taken up the basket. As the years pass, Moses (the baby from the basket) spends time with the stableman, Mentu, who teaches him the language of plants and animals, and most importantly tells him about the sacred book of Thoth, hidden in the river at Koptos. Moses grows increasingly sympathetic to the plight of the Hebrews—he hears rumors that he is of Hebrew blood, he kills an Egyptian overseer who is being hard on a Hebrew, and he departs across the Red Sea alone, leaving Egypt and his nobility behind.

In the country of Midian, Moses sees his first mountain, called Mount Sinai on one side and Mount Horeb by people on the other side. Here he meets Jethro, who will become like a father to him, and his Jethro's daughter Zipporah, who will become Moses' wife. Moses stays twenty years, becoming the “finest hoodoo man in the world” (114), but he knows he must go to Koptos to read the Thoth. This book teaches him how to command the heavens and earth, and he knows that a divine power has come to him. After a year, he returns to Mount Sinai and goes up the mountain to meet God, who speaks to him through a burning bush. Moses picks up a snake, which becomes a rod in his hand. God tells Moses he must return to Egypt and set His people free. Jethro, who has also been encouraging Moses to help the Hebrews, offers the help of Aaron and Miriam, who will work for Moses from the inside. Moses departs for Egypt.

Moses meets with Pharaoh and asks for the freedom of the Israelites. He also meets Joshua, who becomes like a brother to him. In an ongoing show of power, Moses turns his rod to a snake, turns water to blood, and brings on plagues of frogs, lice, flies, sick cattle, boils, hail, locusts, and darkness. Between each plague, Pharaoh offers to let the Israelites go, but he continues to renege on his promise. When the Pharoah's first born son dies, however, he tells Moses that the Hebrews must leave the country. Moses encourages a quick departure, fearing Pharaoh will change his mind again. After 430 years of slavery, the Israelites prepare to leave. By the time they reach the Red Sea, the Pharaoh's men are in hot pursuit. Moses parts the sea, and the Israelites cross safely; then he closes the sea, and Pharaoh and all his men drown. Moses knows now that he could return to Egypt as king, but he prefers his quiet studies in nature. Not without difficulties attending people not used to freedom, the people begin to accept Moses as their leader.

The long wait now begins. Moses sustains victory for the Israelites, and Joshua becomes his leading general in times of conflict and right hand man in quieter times. Moses climbs Mount Sinai for another talk with God, who tells Moses to get the people cleaned up as He will have a word with them, but then God decides he will talk with Moses alone on top of the mountain. Moses is gone for forty days, and, with Aaron in charge, the people construct a golden calf and begin to have a party. When Moses descends the mountain with the tablets of laws in hand, he is irate that the people have gotten out of hand. He flings the tablets at the golden idol, shattering the metal with stone. A war breaks out in which the evil ones, who are not with God, are killed. God gives Moses new tablets to replace the broken ones. Moses must deal with Miriam's jealousy of Zipporah; the loss of old Jethro, his closest companion on earth; and the loss of Aaron, who follows Moses part way up the mountain and dies there. As each of these people die, Moses has the opportunity to rethink his own life. He knows that the forty years of wandering for the Israelites is the time it takes to “channel the intentions of men,” so that they can “fumble their way back to God” (279). At the end of the book, Moses is alone, and his last recorded conversation is with a lizard; it is clear that Moses, as long as he lives, will never tire of seeking new knowledge.

Dust Tracks on a Road. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1942; New York: Library of America, 1995.

Hurston's autobiography begins with the story of the town she referred to as her birthplace, Eatonville, Florida. Among the details of her early years in Eatonville are her feelings about her parents, and descriptions of the house and garden, the town store, and the talkers on the front porch. Hurston is one of eight children—one sister, Sarah, and six brothers, Bob, Joel, Ben, John, Everett, and Dick. From an early age, Hurston was aware that she did not fit easily into expected roles. She was more comfortable in the boys' world with their attendant freedoms. Early on she impressed white visitors to her school with her ability to read. She was not afraid of whites, even when she had been warned by her folks to be wary. In recalling the development of her imagination, Hurston acknowledges the influence of the talkers on the front porch, as she would often pause on the porch, take her time, and absorb their tales.

When her mother died, Hurston experienced a shift in her world; she describes a collective feeling of all her siblings: “We were all grubby bales of misery” (619). The hour of her mother's death began Hurston's wanderings. She moved to Jacksonville to live with her oldest brother and attend school there, but her father stopped paying for her schooling. Home again, her father remarried a considerably younger woman, and Hurston threw herself into a legendary fight with her stepmother. For five years after her mother's death, Hurston moved among the homes of relatives and friends. She took an assortment of odd jobs, among them several assignments as a maid to white women. She landed a position as a lady's maid for a traveling company of Gilbert and Sullivan performers. She recounts many stories of her own gullibility, but it is through her time with this performance company that Hurston matured and gained a lesson that would be with her all her life: she came to see that love was often a substitute for professional failure and that a career could often be a substitute for failed love.

Hurston returned to school in Baltimore and soon moved on to Howard University in Washington, D.C., and then to Barnard in New York. She shifted her major from English to anthropology upon meeting Franz Boas, the country's leading anthropologist of the time. From her arrival in New York City in 1925 until she graduated in 1928, Hurston flourished, meeting people who offered their help just when she needed it. Once she began her research, which she defined as “formalized curiosity” (687), she also made the time to reconnect with all the members of her family. She identifies Mrs. R. Osgood Mason, her patron, with whom she felt a psychic connection and to whom she refers as godmother.

In “My People, My People,” Hurston makes her boldest statement about the race card: in short, she wonders why Negroes often will say one thing and do another. In chapters on friendship and love, she first details her connection with Fannie Hurst and Ethel Waters, showing how their friendship works, and then relates the story of her first marriage and the love she has with the man who is the inspiration for Tea Cake in Their Eyes Were Watching God, summing up that relationship by claiming, “I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have loved and been loved by the perfect man” (751). Just before summing up her life at this half-century mark, she takes a close look at religion, deciding that at this point in her life she knows a great deal about the forms religion takes but very little about its mysteries. Work, however, will sustain her, and she calls it the nearest thing to happiness: “I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death” (768).

Seraph of the Suwanee. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948; New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.

Hurston's last novel opens in a town called Sawley, in west Florida, on the Suwanee River, a place known for its turpentine and lumber production. Dashing, eligible Jim Meserve woos and wins the resistant Arvay Henson, who had been stung by love when her older sister snatched away the young minister, the object of her affections. From the beginning of their relationship, Jim tells Arvay there is no need for her to do the thinking; her role is to have babies and be nice. In the years to follow, Arvay gives birth to retarded son Earl, beautiful daughter Angeline, and Kenny, the spitting image of his father. The young family moves from western to central Florida, down in Polk County. In these early years, Jim and Arvay, a white couple, depend on the support and strength of their Negro friends, Joe and Dessie Kelsey, whom Jim invites to move to a small home in the back yard of their land on a swamp. The industrious Jim has proved successful at managing fruit pickers in the orange groves of central Florida, and the Negroes whom he supervises have helped him build his home.

Jim often bemoans the state of his marriage, for when he kids around with Arvay, she takes him literally. Then he berates himself, knowing that he loves Arvay, for she represents to him a mystical pull, the source of a deep comfort that replaces the absence of his own mother. Arvay also worries about their relationship, often scared that Jim will up and leave her with her children; she envisions a life of destitution. Because Jim and Arvay do not discuss their relationship with each other, the Kelseys' role is heightened. And so the mostly happy years pass. When the Kelseys move away, Jim finds new white tenants for their home, the Corregios. Older now and obsessively attracted to the daughters of the new neighbors, Earl demonstrates behavior that causes Jim to suggest institutionalizing him; Arvay, of course, will not hear of it. She loves her first born more because of his afflictions.

Arvay takes Earl to visit her dismal childhood home and leaves him there with her mother. Six months pass before Arvay can no longer live with the guilt she feels about the separation from Earl. She retrieves him only to lose him once they return home. Unable to control himself, Earl attacks Lucy Ann Corregio; later, a desperate Earl cornered in the swamp takes aim at his father and pulls the trigger. In order to save his life, Jim's neighbors fire at Earl, killing him. Jim knows before Arvay can admit it to herself that Earl's death is a burden lifted.

The focus shifts to Angeline and Kenny, whose increasing sophistication as they grow older makes Arvay repeatedly feel uncomfortable. She worries about how to advise them and how to behave in the company of their friends. The social pressures attached to Jim and Arvay's improved socioeconomic status is her greatest challenge. Through the years, Arvay has resisted Jim's invitations to join him at the neighbors; she appears to have no outside friends of her own. Her world has become her home, her children, and her husband; her role is to cook and clean, and at night, be a comfort to Jim. The Corregios move to the coast and Jim sets them up in a shrimping business. As soon as Kenny graduates from college, Jim is eager to move to the coast himself and become a full-time captain of his fishing boat. With both children away from home, Jim spends more time on the coast, and Arvay stays home alone.

Jim builds a porch onto their home, and though it takes a while, Arvay listens and the “porch told her that she belonged” (237). But an encounter between a snake and Jim, and Arvay's inability to act quickly causes Jim to despair. Though he will continue financially to support her, the next move must be hers. She has one year to respond, to figure it out, and to come to him. Soon Arvay gets word that her mother is sick and she leaves immediately for Sawley, only to find out that her mother is about to die. Maria Henson had been holding on to life, waiting for Arvay to arrive so that she might say goodbye to her younger daughter. It is this trip home for her mother's death, the funeral, the contact with her sister's family, and the healing that comes from burning the home of her youth and donating the land to the town for a park that reinvigorates Arvay for the reconnection with Jim. In the penultimate chapter, the title of the book, never mentioned in the text itself, becomes clear. Arvay is the angel, incapable of ill will towards anyone. She leaves Sawley this time knowing she will not return; her home is with Jim. Though she plans the language she will use during her reunion with Jim, once the reality is upon her and she is on the fishing boat, the Arvay Henson, she and Jim fall quickly into old roles with each other. Though she does command the captain on his own boat, she understands finally that she had not known Jim and she “had known her own self even less,” but finds satisfaction in the realization that her job “was mothering. What more could any woman want and need?” (351). The novel concludes with a repetition of a familiar scene of bedroom comfort: as the ocean rocks gently, Jim's head is nuzzled on Arvay's breast. The snuggling couple is about to wake to greet the new day.

The Complete Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

This anthology includes nineteen previously published stories over thirty years of Hurston's writing life in the order of their publication from the first in May 1921, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” to the last in 1951, “The Tablets of the Law.” The collection also includes seven more stories that were not published during Hurston's life.

Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project: Go Gator and Muddy the Water. Edited by Pamela Bordelon. New York: Norton, 1999.

The collection includes a lengthy biographical essay and fourteen readings from Hurston's work on the Florida FWP during the New Deal days of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration.

Selected Articles. Edited by Cheryl A. Wall. New York: Library of America, 1995.

This sampling includes twenty-two pieces. Some can be found elsewhere, but especially important is Hurston's controversial editorial for the Orlando Sentinel in response to the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education: “Court Order Can't Make Races Mix.”

The Sanctified Church. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island, 1981.

This collection of a dozen folklore pieces includes five pieces on Hurston's study of churches.

Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. Edited by Carla Kaplan. New York: Doubleday, 2002.

Kaplan has collected about 500 letters spanning the years 1917 through 1960.