A. W. MacCrinnan: Review of ‘Reuben’ by Tito Perdue - "He first develops a huge pipeline ... Through it he forces a great part of the country’s swarthy immigrants (legal and illegal). Reuben’s intention, 'by means of threats and inducements' is to export 'all those who entered the country since Johnson’s immigration bill of 1965.' Reuben next turned his attention to the some sixty million African-American Negroes ..."

Review of ‘Reuben’ by Tito Perdue

Reuben

By Tito Perdue

Washington Summit Publishers, 2014

290 Pages; $24.95

Reuben, Tito Perdue’s eighth published novel, is by far the 75-year-old author’s most subversive, incendiary, and defiantly reactionary work yet. It is bound to offend. It is sure to provoke. It is an apt and needful epic for our times and for our kind.

The story begins in present-day rural north-central Alabama. Reuben-a young, “uplander” bumpkin with a poorly-forged prosthetic metal foot-stumbles upon the humble estate of the excessively eccentric Leland (Lee) Pefley and his kind-hearted entomologist wife, Judy Pefley (a recurring and prominent personage in Perdue’s oeuvre). Lee is bitter and world-weary, curmudgeonly, and a bit transgressive. Situated atop a high ridge, he spends many an hour at “the Edge,” peering through his telescope down at the city of Birmingham, cursing the hideousness of the city itself and the ignorance and vulgarity of its inhabitants.

Lee Pefley, however, is also a brilliant visionary with a boundless love of knowledge and an inordinately profound understanding of the nature of beauty. . . .

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