Henry Dumas's fabulist fiction is a masterful synthesis of myth and religion, culture and nature, mask and identity. From the Deep South to the simmering streets of Harlem, his characters embark on surreal and mythic quests armed with only their wit, their words, and their wisdom. With an astonishing ear for language, Dumas creates a mythology of the psychological, spiritual, and political development of African American culture by interweaving elements of Christian metaphor, African tradition, southern folklore, American music and America's history of slavery and endemic racism. For the first time, all of Dumas's short fiction is collected here, including several previously unpublished stories