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The Least One

Published
Nov 1992
Main Genre
General Fiction General Fiction
Pages
368

About This Book

    The Least One, published originally in 1967, portrays a white sharecropping family during the Great Depression and is based on Borden Deal's experiences growing up on a small farm in northeastern Mississippi. "My own memory produced a flood of material," said the author. "I remembered the loss of the farm, the day the sheriff had come to dispossess us; I remembered picking blackberries and selling them in town for a dime a bucket; I remembered the hope and promise of a government mule."
    The story is told through the voice of a twelve-year-old, significantly called Boy Sword, and is set in a fictitious community that suggests the area of Cullman, Alabama. Deal portrays the realities of cotton-field work: planting, chopping, the laying-by time, and harvesting. He succeeds in evoking not only the crushing economic circumstances of poor Southern whites in that period but also their fierce sense of independence and self-sufficiency.

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Paperback

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Trade Paperback
Nov 1992 University of Alabama Press ISBN 0817306730
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Hardcover

Hardcover edition cover
Hardcover
Oct 1992 Turtleback Books ISBN 0613840356
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