Country Place

“In this novel Ann Petry shows, through her compactness of style, increased fluidity of dialogue, and convincing character analysis, a marked advance over The Street.” —Margaret Just Wormley, Journal of Negro Education, 1948
 

“Gossip, malice, calculation, infidelity, adultery, attempted murder, sudden death, and a set of surprise bequests that more or less straighten things out—these are some of the dominant matters treated in Country Place. Yet this is, despite the violence of its events, a quiet book, carefully and economically phrased, and a good deal different from the author’s best-selling The Street.” —Richard Sullivan, New York Times, 1947
 

“In Country Place (1947), Ann Petry dared to violate an unofficial literary commandment of her era: African American writers shall confine their creative vision to racial protest, chronicling black suffering in the service of solving the so-called 'Negro Problem.'  Petry flips the racial script, depicting a nearly all-white, deceptively tranquil hamlet resembling her native Saybrook, Connecticut.  Long out of print, this neglected tour de force is a startling departure from her acclaimed debut novel The Street; with its reissue, I anticipate it finally garnering the wider readership it deserves.” –Keith Clark, author of The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry