T. S. Stribling

Focusing on the Vaiden family of northern Alabama, The Forge depicts "the changes forced on life in the South by the war and its aftermath."--Intro., p.x.

Winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1933, The Store is the second novel of Stribling's monumental trilogy set in the author's native Tennessee Valley region of North Alabama. The novel's action begins in 1884, when Grover Cleveland became the first Democratic president since the end of the Civil War, and it centers about the emergence of Colonel Miltiades Vaiden as a figure of wealth and power in the city of Florence. In The Store, Stribling succeeds in presenting the essence of an age through the everyday lives of his characters. Writing in The New Statesman and Nation upon publication of the book, Gerald Bullett stated The Store "is a first-rate book of its kind, a good story filled with diverse and vital characters; and much of it cannot be read without that primitive excitement, that eagerness to know what comes next, which is, after all, the triumph of the good story teller."

Everything changed the day a black dragon was born… Cassarah is trapped in the life of being a noble woman whose family is looked down upon. Why you may ask? Because they earned their title rather as payment, rather than being born to the privilege. On the day Cassarah goes to court, finally about to be accepted by society, fate takes the reins and lands her on the hot sands of the Dragon Roost during a hatching. When the black dragon chooses Cassarah and places his mark on her, they are bonded for life. Being claimed by this majestic creature is only the start of the adventure as secrets about her family's heritage come to light. Not only had her ancestors never been noble blood, they’d been mercenaries. A people who have been hunted down to the point of near extinction, but all that is about to change now that the black dragon has been born. Will Cassarah be able to shake off the shackles of her noble upbringing to be the savior these people need? Or will the lies and abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother keep her from spreading her wings?

Negro life in Tennessee.

In this concluding novel of Stribling's trilogy on the changes facing the South between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Jerry Catlin, nephew to Col. Miltiades Vaiden, embodies the "secularization of religion" during the 1920s.