A rediscovered "masterpiece" ( Kirkus ) of Black American literature first published in 1950, about an unlikely friendship in a West Virginia town “One of the great novelists of the last 100 years.” —Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo After several years of seclusion in the Black quarter of Beetlecreek, West Virginia, in the precarious 1930s, a retired carnival worker named Bill Trapp strikes up a chance friendship with Johnny Johnson, a Pittsburgh teenager transplanted into his uncle’s home. Bill is white. Johnny is Black. Both are searching for something that will give meaning to their lives. While Bill tries to court favor in the community, Johnny joins a local gang; meanwhile, their new friendship kindles hope that there is something for each of them beyond the bounds of Beetlecreek. But as the church society’s Fall Festival approaches, the battle between the repressive town and the aspirations of its trapped inhabitants comes to a nail-biting head. First published in 1950, Beetlecreek stands as a moving condemnation of provincialism and fundamentalism, and a classic of Black American literature. Both a critique of racial hypocrisy and a new direction for the African American novel, it occupied fresh territory for its time: neither the gritty realism of Richard Wright nor the ironic modernism of Ralph Ellison. “One of the great novelists of the last 100 years.”—Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo “[Demby is] a true artist.” —Arna Bontemps, author of Black Thunder “[A] quiet masterpiece.” – Kirkus Reviews William Demby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1922, and attended college in Clarksburg, West Virginia, before enlisting in World War II and serving in Italy. He graduated from Fisk University in 1947 then moved abroad to Rome, where he spent the next two decades working as a novelist, journalist, and script translator and screenwriter for the Italian cinema. In the late 1960s, Demby joined the faculty at The College of Staten Island, dividing his time between the United States and Italy. His works include Beetlecreek , The Catacombs , Love Story Black , and King Comus . In 2006, he was the recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. He died in Sag Harbor, New York, in 2013. S. A. Cosby is a New York Times bestselling writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the author of All the Sinners Bleed , which was on more than forty best of the year lists, including Barack Obama’s; Edgar Award finalist Razorblade Tears ; and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Blacktop Wasteland . He has also won the Anthony Award, ITW Thriller Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, Black Caucus American Library Association Award, and Audie Award and has been longlisted for the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Chapter One Always when he looked in the mirror his eyes were different. Sometimes they peered from out of the broken glass asking an unanswerable question, sometimes they were angry and damning, sometimes they were sullen and brooding—­too often they were the eyes of a dead man, jellied and blank. This ritual of looking at himself went on every day as soon as he got out of bed. His thick, blunt fingers would clutch at each other, moving back and forth slowly like the antennae of insects. His long, fleshy nose with its countless red pinpricks would expand and contract in time to his breathing and the gray-­striped lips that refused to open over the severe outward slant of the front teeth would strain themselves into the subtlest kind of smile. There were deep vertical wrinkles along his cheek and at the corners of his eyes which gave an impression of kindliness. These wrinkles moved up and down, restlessly recording the changing climates of his emotions. Thus he would stand, sometimes for over an hour, a silent ugly man who could no longer tell whether he was inside the mirror or inside himself. Bill Trapp had not long been at the mirror that afternoon when he heard a rustling in the bushes near the stonewall. Quickly he ran his hand through his matted hair and put on a huge felt hat. He walked very slowly, half on tiptoes, until he arrived at a bush. There, he kneeled down on the cold mud and parted the branches. He waited until he heard the rustling again and then rose high enough to see the intruders. His heart beat fast as it always did. Always when they came he would look into their faces. He would be filled with uncontrollable excitement knowing that he was seeing them while they couldn’t see him. Faster and faster his heart would beat until, filled with shame and rage, he would rush out at them waving his arms wildly, shouting, almost screaming long after they had disappeared down the road. In fifteen years he had had only one visitor, a tramp who came to his door to beg because he was too proud to beg from the Negroes down by the bridge. He gave coffee and sandwiches to this tramp, who, as soon as he had f