Description
This is the most humorous, most ironic, most Southern novel that has come out of the South for many years. It is not historical, although there is a good deal of history in it, and it does not deal with decadent poor whites, or romantic relics of antebellum aristocracy, or anything expected at all. Colonel Effingham’s raid is upon a smallish city rather deep in the South, which one suspects is highly typical, and which is described with an ease and a loving care that gives, as a good novel should, the very feel and smell and look and way of thinking of an American community.