Slavery Sure Made People Horny

Another installment in Harry
Whittington’s plantation porn saga.

Trigger warning: It’s plantation porn. ’Nuff said.

If one were asked to name an especially horny time in American history, the 1850s likely wouldn’t come up, yet SECRET OF BLACKOAKS, the second installment in Lance Horner’s plantation porn series by Harry Whittington writing as Ashley Carter, describes the antebellum South like it was the heightof the sexual revolution. From its first chapter, when the new master of the Blackoaks plantation, Styles Kenric, gives his hunky young slave Moab a morning hummer before starting his day, to its last, when Moab, having since fled the plantation, lifts the skirt of his fellow escapee to remove a bullet from her leg and feels an “acute stirring in his loins” upon seeing her bare ass, sex is at the forefront of people’s minds.

At the end of 1976’s Master of Blackoaks, the titular master Ferrell Baynard dies. However, his oldest son Ferrell-Junior, wracked with guilt over his failure to stop the gang rape of his girlfriend Lorna June, has entered a monastery to become a priest, leaving the door open for his scheming brother-in-law Styles Kenric to seize control of the plantation. In this 1978 follow-up, Styles realizes he fought to become captain of a sinking ship. Blackoaks has massive debts, its cotton crops aren’t bringing in the money like they used to, and the one product sustaining the plantation, Ferrell Baynard’s famous corn liquor, can’t be produced since the distillery burned down. Making matters worse, Ferrell Baynard’s widow, Miz Claire, showing signs of dementia (she frequently urges Styles and others to wait for her dead husband to return before making any decisions), has elected to host the wedding of her “big breasted cousin from Charleston,” piling on more debt on top of the debt incurred from Ferrell Baynard’s funeral.

But Styles isn’t going to let the plantation’s shaky finances stop him from his dream of turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. By quickly—and coldly—selling off slaves and arranging a line of credit at the local bank (run by Lorna June’s husband Luke Scroggings), Styles stabilizes Blackoaks’ finances in the short term, with enough capital left over to fund future investments, i.e., slaves. Specifically, Styles wants to purchase women of Fulani origin to mate with his two prized male Fulani slaves, Blade and Moab, the whole plan discussed like he’s breeding purebred dogs. This is not comfortable reading.

His plans are almost derailed when Jamie Lee, the aforementioned big-breasted cousin from Charleston, is caught fucking Moab by her fiancé Link Tetherow (yes, Link Tetherow), described as handsome and muscular, but walking “slightly spraddled-legged, as if he were for some reason tender of crotch.” She accuses Moab of rape, but the Baynards don’t readily buy her story since Jamie Lee has not-so-discreetly been sampling all the cocks of Blackoaks, including the one attached to Morgan, the learning-impaired youngest Baynard son, the experience turning the teenager into a compulsive masturbator. The Baynards manage to hold off a lynch mob, headed by the vile Gil Talmadge who instigated the gang-rape of Lorna June, while a visiting Ferrell-Junior convinces Link to tell the gang of bloodthirsty rednecks that it was all a misunderstanding, implying that he might out Link as one of the Lorna June’s rapists to her husband—and the Tetherows’ creditor—Luke Scroggings. Nevertheless, it’s not until Miz Claire, in one of her more lucid moments, shoots Gil Talmadge’s prize slave Arthur that the lynch mob backs down. The wedding goes on as planned, and Jamie Lee and Link exit the book.

With the wedding out of the way, Styles puts his energy into turning Blackoaks into a premier slave breeding operation. To do that, he travels to Tallahassee to purchase a female slave of Fulani origin. Enter Ahma, who is tall, beautiful, barely 16 years old and very angry, with a history of running and fighting enslavement at all costs, even killing a man to get away. “You’ll never break her,” warns fellow plantation owner Cleatus Dennison. But Styles, already miffed that he’s not treated with proper deference as the new master of Blackoaks, is determined to prove all the naysayers wrong and buys Ahma anyway. The trip back to Alabama is a long one, made longer by Ahma’s behavior, starting with her attempting to flee Styles’s carriage (or kill herself):

Luckily, the carriage was moving at a slow clip or the girl would have been dead. Though she was shackled, wrists and ankles, she had lunged over the tailboard of the converted carriage. She hung there, head down, her black hair dragging on the rutted road.

Her face was pallid and she was fighting for breath, almost unconscious when Laus, Perseous [slaves traveling with Styles] and Styles ran back and lifted her again into the carriage. Styles poured her a cup of water from the canteen. She stared at him, refused to touch it. “Why do you want to kill yourself?” he demanded.

She did not answer, merely stared at him, her eyes bleak with hatred.

Later, they stop at a rundown farm to buy some food from the owners who can barely feed themselves. After Ahma spits a mouthful of clabber into his face, Styles, struggling to keep his composure, tries to sell her on life at Blackoaks, as if she has a choice in the matter.

“Two beautiful Fulani boys are waiting for you up at Blackoaks, Ahma. Blade and Moab. They will belong to you alone. You’ll live with them. You’ll have good food—none of this cracker hog-swill. Good food, a nice soft bed. Long nights with Blad in your arms. You’ll want him, Ahma. No matter how much you hate me, that’s how much you’re going to love Blade. Why don’t you behave and eat so you’ll look beautiful for Blade? You’ll make babies together, Ahma. You and Blade. Beautiful pure blood Fulani children.”

Now she spoke, moaning, a savage sound of heartbreak. “Babies? For you to sell, white Masta? Sell like you bought me yesterday?” She raged, fighting at her bonds, tears streaming down her cheeks….

Styles’s shoulders sagged. He walked slowly around the carriage and swung up into the seat, waiting for the [B]lack men to climb in. It looked like a long, hard journey home….

However, Ahma’s resistance to slavery melts—or at least temporarily subsides—the moment she meets Blade. Suddenly, fucking Blade is more important than a life of servitude, conveniently allowing Secret of Blackoaks to put a pin in Ahma’s fiery resistance until the novel’s finale.

Styles isn’t entirely reassured, however. It seemed to him that women were bitches. Some of them were violent bitches. Ahma had already proved her violence. She needed a good fucking—the kind the Mt. Zion louts called “a good horse-fucking.” But Styles soon learns he’s got bigger problems than a slave that may/may not be tamed by Blade’s formidable cock. While he was in Florida, his wife Kathy ran off with Hunt Campbell.

Sex, Booze and Yellow Fever

The British edition of Secret
of Blackoaks. The U.K. version of
Blade is closer to what one would expect,
though still smaller than the
Michael B. Jordan-esque physique 
I’d imagined.

That Kathy would run off with Hunt Campbell is hardly a surprise. Their eventual affair was heavily teased near the end of Master of Blackoaks, and in couple’s interactions in Secret of Blackoaks make their affair inevitable. Hunt, already fired once when Styles deemed tutoring Morgan a waste of money, only to be hired by Kathy as her French teacher, is again sent packing by Styles, told that he needs to be gone by the time he returns from Florida. What’s surprising is Kathy finding the courage to leave with him (she’d resolved she could pay the price of living unmarried as Hunt’s mistress; she could not endure losing him and remaining suffocated and starved as Styles’s wife).

They end up in New Orleans, spending most of their time boning in their hotel suite. Kathy is shy, easily embarrassed when Hunt disrobes in front of her (“I’m proud of my manhood. I’ve nothing to hide,” Hunt tells her) but is suddenly as uninhibited as a Bourbon Street prostitute a few orgasms later (“Do you want to—fuck me?”). Their days and nights are all fun and cum until they leave their hotel room one day and are spotted by the Bretherton sisters, old maids who live at a plantation 10 miles away from Blackoaks.

It doesn’t take long for news of Kathy and Hunt being spotted in New Orleans to reach Styles. Styles, determined to maintain his honor, explains that the Bretherton sisters must be mistaken, Kathy is away visiting family in Charleston, but then immediately plans to track her down. Instead of traveling to New Orleans himself, though, he decides to prepare Blade to make the trip. Here’s where the book really strains credulity. Styles’s plan to manipulate Blade into seducing or, better still, raping Kathy by feeding him stories about how she has always secretly desired Blade, is diabolical, but sending Blade to travel across Alabama unaccompanied in the 1850s, with nothing more than a letter of introduction, a purse full of coins and newly acquired basic reading skills, sounds like a death sentence. Still, I was entertained by the descriptions of Blade getting prepped for his journey, with Whittington always sure to keep the reader apprised of Blade’s huge dick, be it through Styles’s grooming (“[Kathy] told me she kept thinking about that big staff of yours, Blade.”), Blade getting scrubbed down by three houseboys (“Let them wash you down there, Blade—gets sweated.”) or when Blade tries on a freshly tailored suit, which shows off “the outline of Blade’s manhood at the crotch of the skintight trousers.”

Styles could, of course, just leave well enough alone as Kathy and Hunt’s relationship is rapidly disintegrating. Hunt quickly comes to the realization that life with Kathy, a woman used to being cared for by others, is an expensive proposition. His savings are rapidly dwindling, especially now that he’s rented an apartment and hired a servant for them, and he’s been unsuccessful in securing another tutoring gig, an unfortunate consequence when your approach to job hunting consists of sitting back and hoping word of mouth marketing pays off. Furthermore, Hunt becomes increasingly paranoid, certain Styles is close to finding them. He already suspects (correctly) that he’s being followed. Hunt starts drinking more to soothe his jangled nerves. It’s not long before he prefers getting drunk to getting laid.

Adding to Hunt’s stress is the yellow fever epidemic sweeping through New Orleans, killing thousands. Hunt may be hot, but he’s a coward, wanting to avoid physical pain at all costs. He knows staying in New Orleans means risking disease or, worse, being murdered by Styles. Staying with Kathy means financial ruin. So, early one morning, he leaves a letter and $500 for Kathy and flees the city.

Kathy spends the first few days of Hunt’s abandonment in denial. Then she contracts “yellow jack,” whereupon her housekeeper says fuck no! and bolts, taking the $500 Hunt left for Kathy on her way out the door. Shortly after the housekeeper exits the apartment, Joe Bullock, a sleazy P.I. hired by Styles and the man following Hunt earlier, enters. He discovers Kathy asleep in bed, covered in her own vomit. “You poor little bitch,” he remarks before leaving her for dead.

Styles Loses his Shit

Blade does eventually make his way to New Orleans, and while his journey isn’t easy, he isn’t mistreated as badly as one would expect. As one would expect, Styles’s letters of introduction have no sway over the pervading racism of the time, the only courtesy innkeepers extend is allowing Blade to park his carriage behind their establishment and camp out there (Blade still gets a blowjob from a kitchen slave because the demands of smut override believability).

There’s a long stretch devoted to Blade’s misadventures upon arriving in New Orleans, including his meeting a flamboyant pimp, having a night of fun on Congo Square and tangling with a vengeful cop, but let’s skip ahead. Blade finds Kathy nearly dead of yellow fever and enlists the help of a MarieLaveau-esque character to nurse her back to health, or at least healthy enough to travel. They stop at the same inn that had previously refused Blade a room, but as Kathy’s slave he is grudgingly allowed to sleep indoors, though his being permitted to sleep in her room just doesn’t track. Were she accompanied by a female slave, I could believe it. A big strapping Black man sleeping in the same room as a white lady in the antebellum South? Not so much.

The sleeping arrangement is a plot contrivance, of course, employed to facilitate Blade’s seduction of Kathy. While their eventual hooking up is consensual, it kind of plays out like a guy putting the moves on his best friend’s ex while she’s still crying about being dumped. I’ll admit I lost patience with this particular chapter, largely because Whittington draws out the will-they-or-won’t-they way longer than he should. By the chapter’s midpoint I was mentally screaming JUST FUCK ALREADY!

Long story short, Kathy gives in, has some of the most mind-blowing orgasms of her life—so powerful that she forgets the lovin’ Hunt put on her—and immediately regrets what she’s done, whereupon she kills herself by stabbing herself in the heart with Blade’s knife, holding the knife’s hilt reminding her—I shit you not—of “the way Blade had drawn her clasped hand up and down the rigidity of his own staff.” Even when a character is committing suicide, sex remains top of mind.

Remarkably, Blade manages to hide the wound and convince the innkeeper that Kathy passed away from yellow fever. On his return trip to Blackoaks it dawns on Blade that he was used. Kathy had never desired him (Styles was actually describing his own desires for Blade’s body). Styles had used him. By the time he returns to the plantation he’s good and pissed and hungry for vengeance.

Everyone at Blackoaks is grief stricken when Blade returns with Kathy in a box, except Styles, who is described as having “the stony look of a man who has been cheated.” What pushes him over the edge is seeing the note Kathy wrote to him, revealing that she did, in fact, take her own life. Worse, is the letter’s tone, which isn’t contrite but defiant, ending with the line: I found ecstasy only with your Negro slave.

And then Styles loses his shit. He accuses Blade of murdering Kathy, and Blade accuses Styles of lying to him, and that Styles is guilty of her death. Styles orders Blade shackled and whipped, at which point Blade, out of fucks to give, punches the unhinged master and attempts to strangle him. Now an apoplectic Styles isn’t just content with having Blade whipped, he wants him branded as well, leading to the following harrowing scene:

Styles lifted the branding iron and advanced toward Blade. Ahma screamed and tried to fight free. Perseus and Moab held her. But Blade did not move. When the huge R [for “runner”] was inches from Blade’s face, Styles hesitated, waiting for Blade to whimper, to plead.

Suddenly Styles thrust the branding iron with all his strength into Blade’s face. Ahma’s raging, animal screams were the only sound. It was as if not a man or woman breathed while that branding iron seared Blade’s face. The sharp, sizzling sound of fried flesh was loud in the silence. Blade’s left eye melted under the heat., its socket seared, red hot and empty. The flesh was burned away to the bone from his forehead, foreskull, and nose. His mouth cooked and split like broiled meat. His teeth were bared through the break in his lips in a permanent horrible grimace. His right eye broiled, gray, lying like an oyster in the heat-seared socket. He was completely blind.

The savage branding of Blade triggers an uprising, though the revolt is not led by Ahma. The other slaves think her inaction is because she’s distraught over losing Blade, who was killed—mercifully—shortly after he was branded, shot by Miz Claire at his insistence. However, Ahma reveals to Moab her real reason for not participating in the uprising: “You let them go….They scairt...they stupid n[ope!]…they don’t know they got to kill all the whites or they dead….They let one white alive to say they name—they gets killed.” Instead, she plans to escape during the ensuing melee, urging Moab to run with her.

Once Styles hears the commotion and sees most of Blackoaks up in flames (only the main house is spared), he goes outside to investigate and is immediately jumped by four men, led by Perseus, stripped and raped. They hadn’t killed him because they wanted him alive, the object of their raging scorn and ridicule, the white man who screamed like a woman as he was being sodomized in the grass.

The distasteful coda to that scene is when Styles, having mostly recovered from his gang-rape, spares Perseus’s life on the condition that “you give it to me—like did that night of the revolt.” Not only does this conflate rape with sex, it also perpetuates a myth that bottoms are into pain. Then again, what was I expecting from plantation porn, political correctness?

Meanwhile, Ahma and Moab are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of a search posse—involving many of the same men who were part of the lynch mob in the first part of the book—as they make their way north. Ahma is shot, nevermind that Styles strictly instructed members of the posse that he wanted the escaped slaves brought back alive. Ahma’s wound isn’t fatal, but it will seriously impede her ability to travel. She urges Moab to keep going without her, but he refuses to leave her. They’re situation seems hopeless, until they encounter an abolitionist ex machina. 

Less N-words than Django Unchained, at Least

Like its predecessor, Secret of Blackoaks was difficult to put down, no matter how uncomfortable it got. And though it takes a few side trips from its main storyline, it’s got a more cohesive plot than Master of Blackoaks.

That said, I must admit—guiltily—that I liked Master of Blackoaks more. Though Secret of Blackoaks is fairly well-paced, there are moments where the book seems stuck in place, such as Blade cajoling Kathy into having sex. Other parts seem like padding, included as just another a way to work in a few more gratuitous sex scenes, even when they ultimately serve the plot, like Blade’s adventures on Congo Square in New Orleans or Moab’s continued affair with the field boss’s wife Florine.

But perhaps the book’s biggest missed opportunity—and Whittington’s biggest stumble—is the handling of the Ahma character. The story would have been more interesting had she been the driving force behind the uprising, convincing the complacent slaves of Blackoaks that even though they’re treated relatively well by the Baynards, they’re still slaves. Instead, her anger is immediately soothed by Blade’s huge dick. I know this isn’t Roots, but it would’ve been more satisfying in some instances if Whittington aimed higher than between his characters’ legs.

Though Secret of Blackoaks doesn’t pack the same punch as its predecessor, it’s still engrossing and appalling, and if nothing else, features slightly fewer n-words than Django Unchained. Recommended for Harry Whittington completists. Everyone else can be assured that they won’t be bored, but they will be judged if they dare read it in public.

I’ve only read a few books by Lance Horner (Rogue Roman,
The Mahound), but I always got a gay vibe from his writing.
So, maybe it’s not a surprise that Whittington borrowed
the name “Kenric” as the last name of Blackoaks’
sole gay character.

Reading Roundup: Sin in the Suburbs More Fun than Small Town Secrets

The cover for the 1962 paperback
 edition of John D. MacDonald’s
Soft Touch suggests it’s a novel about
 a vacation fling gone wrong. Regardless,
I wish the eBay seller I bought this
from had chosen a different spot for
their barcode.

As important as the setting can be to a story, I often encounter authors (and sometimes filmmakers) who treat it as inconsequential. This is especially true of books about the sexploits of the beautiful people, which usually do little more than mention the city where the characters reside/travel to (Los Angeles, New York, Paris) and a few chic locations (Rodeo Drive, Le Cirque, Maxim’s) before focusing on excessive cocaine use, backstabbing and fucking. Of course, there are other authors who go too far in the other direction and use up a lot of ink with florid descriptions of every vista observed, every street traveled, every room entered, every zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

But most authors get it just right, careful to evoke their story’s setting without writing about it to distraction. Not surprisingly, one of those authors is John D. MacDonald, whose 1958 thriller SOFT TOUCH provides a snapshot of suburban depravity, where bored couples fill their empty existences with liberal amounts of alcohol and casual flings. For Jerry, suburbia is a stifling prison, made unendurable by his wife Lorraine, described as “unhappy, shallow, lazy, short-tempered, cruel and amoral.” Lorraine spends most of her time partying with the neighbors, only coming home to sleep it off or pregame for the next night. Jerry wants to divorce her and hook up with Liz, the attractive secretary at E.J. Malton Construction Company where he works. Except, the construction company is owned by his father-in-law. If only he had the capital to start his own company, he could make a clean break and start over with Liz.

Enter his old war buddy, Vince Biskay, who now works as a pilot doing odd jobs for a South American dictator. Vince has come to Jerry with a scheme to intercept a suitcase filled with the dictator’s cash in Miami before it’s handed over to an arms dealer. Jerry is resistant at first but is ultimately swayed when assured he’ll be little more than a getaway driver.

Things don’t go as planned, and they get worse as Jerry’s increasing greed and paranoia clouds his thinking. The ever-reliable MacDonald ramps up the tension as Jerry tries to stay one step ahead of real and imagined threats, convinced he’s pulling it off despite his near-misses and total fuckups, which includes a fight with Lorraine that ends very badly and a tryst with one of the neighborhood’s bored, horny housewives who steps naked out of the bedroom at the worst possible moment.

Soft Touch is a lean, fast-paced thriller that proves once again that MacDonald was a master of the genre. I’ll also recommend the 1961 movie adaptation, Man-Trap. Though Ed Waters’ screenplay takes a lot of liberties with the book’s story, giving it a much happier ending, the movie is largely worth watching for Stella Stevens’ enjoyably nasty performance as Lorraine (re-named Nina in the movie for some reason).

The model’s expression on this 1975
paperback edition of The World They Wanted
is less “Come hither,” and more “What
 the hell do you want?”

Sticking with another tried-and-true author, I selected something from the Herbert Kastle bibliography, THE WORLD THEY WANTED, in which suburban malaise moves to center stage.

Though the cover of the Mayflower Books edition I have makes the novel appear to be about bed-hopping in the 1970s, the book was originally published in 1962, when women weren’t expected to have ambitions beyond housewife, when $17K a year was a decent income, and when a three-bedroom split level could be purchased for $20,000. And $20 grand is what it costs to buy such a home in Birch Hills, a development that’s the brainchild of builder Matt Swain, who hopes there are New York City residents willing to make the move to a more bucolic setting.

Plenty are. Among the first to buy homes in Birch Hills are the Rands, who hope that their juvenile delinquent son George will start flying right once he’s moved away from the bad influences of the city. Joe Bialdi, who has been struggling with mental illness much of his adult life, thinks owning a home in Birch Hills will give him plenty of projects to occupy his troubled mind. Only the Lerners make the move to the ’burbs for typical reasons—more space for the kids—though Miriam Lerner wishes her husband Dave would consider some place closer to NYC, a place that is known to have a Jewish community. Dave, who wants only to assimilate into WASP circles, is drawn to Birch Hills precisely because it affords him an opportunity to deny his Jewish identity.

Of course, the move doesn’t mean their problems stay behind in the city. George Rand finds different ways to rebel, mainly by boning the Bialdis’ overweight daughter, Josie, who has decided the best way to attract boys’ attention is to put out (well, she’s not wrong). Meanwhile, his parents’ marriage begins to fall apart. Steve Rand becomes an alcoholic, and his wife Nancy reveals herself to be a judgmental, antisemitic bitch who hates sex. Is it any wonder that Steve cheats on her?

The move also threatens the Lerners’ marriage. Dave, a commercial artist, is experiencing a career slump and takes his frustrations out on his wife—violently at one point. Miriam, who’s seen how Matt Swain looks at her, contemplates having an affair. Joe Bialdi, on the other hand, seems to get what he wants out of the move, but mowing the lawn and chopping wood can’t keep his inner demons at bay when he discovers George is “taking advantage of” Josie.

It’s tempting to label The World They Wanted as a soap opera and, well, it basically is, but it’s more John Updike than Grace Metalious. It has plenty of lurid parts, but they are written to make a point rather than titillate—and much less explicit than similar scenes in Kastle’s later books. Kastle certainly had the talent to pull off a more ambitious novel, and he almost does it with The World They Wanted. Unfortunately, it’s brought down with a wrap-around narrative concerning Matt Swain and his sales director Adeline Teel. I found myself way more invested in Matt’s business challenges than whether he’d finally come to his senses and marry Adeline (or whether “Addy” would finally come to hers and move on). Worse, Kastle gives the book a corny ending that’s so Hollywood romance you can practically hear the swelling orchestra as you read the final paragraphs.

Avon at least got its cover right for its
1982 paperback edition of
Family Reunion.

Still, I’ll take an OK Herbert Kastle novel over a dud suspense novel, which is what I got when I picked up 1982’s FAMILY REUNION by Joyce Harrington, an author primarily known for writing short stories.

Ten years have passed since Jenny Holland left behind her mother and the small town where she grew up for New York City. Though she hasn’t once visited during her decade away, she has kept in touch with letters to her mentally unstable mother, who never replies, and her cousin Wendell, who writes frequently, never mind that Jenny rejected his wedding proposal before lighting out for NYC. (As for that whole cousins thing: Our cousinship was far enough removed to make this union not only feasible but appropriate.) Recently (roughly 1979 or ’80) Wendell has been writing to Jenny about a planned family reunion at River House, her late grandmother’s estate that has been vacant since her passing. Jenny, who has some unanswered questions about her late father as well as hoping to make amends with her mother, decides the reunion is as good a time to visit as any, and books a flight.

Returning to her hometown raises more questions than answers. An antique straight razor frequently disappears, only to reappear in different parts of River House. The door to the house’s cupola has rusted hinges but a shiny new padlock that is sometimes locked, sometimes not. Jenny returns to her room to find her new clothes cut to ribbons. A heavy dresser in an upstairs children’s room is mysteriously overturned while all adults are on the ground floor. Jenny hears ghostly voices calling to her from across the nearby river. The face of an old hag appears in a kitchen window, disappearing just as suddenly. Are these events supernatural, or part of a sinister real-world plot? Also, what really happened to Jenny’s father?

These mysterious goings-on and past secrets might have yielded an intriguing Midwest gothic (assuming Jenny’s hometown is a fictional stand-in for Harrington’s hometown of Marietta, Ohio), if only Harrington hadn’t written the suspense out of her story at almost every turn. The characterization of Jenny, our narrator, is uneven to the point of being annoying. She is at once quirky and independent, passive and needy, depending on what the story needs her to be. There are a few passages that imply she’s possibly unwell, such as when, seemingly possessed, she contemplates slicing her wrist with that antique straight razor. One could argue that revelations later in the book would explain some of her behavior, such as her becoming more unsure of herself once in the presence of her family, but Harrington never quite makes that connection.

But Jenny isn’t the only problem character. There is Wendell’s sister Fearn (probably pronounced Fern, but that extraneous “a” had me wanting to pronounce it Fee-urn), who is mildly bitchy at best, a total cunt at worst, and she’s usually at her worst. When she’s not berating Jenny like a high school bully she’s yelling at her children whenever they move, being downright abusive to her daughter Millie. However, there are moments when she’s suddenly nice to Jenny, which immediately struck me as suspicious. These moments come to nothing, though, and Fearn resumes being her usual unpleasant self. Another thought was Fearn was being set up as cannon fodder and I eagerly awaited the moment she was killed by whatever/whomever is terrorizing this family reunion, or at the very least, that someone would beat the shit out of her. Instead, Fearn remains unharmed for the entire book, with no one, not even Jenny, bothering to call her out on her shitty attitude.

Most of the other characters in Jenny’s family are written as either judgmental biddies or close-minded yokels, suspicious of Jenny and her big city ways. The few exceptions are Aunt Tillie, a sharp-tongued retired schoolteacher, and another conveniently distant cousin, David, a hot, motorcycle riding hippie who lives in Tucson with his young son Malachi. David becomes Jenny’s closest ally and eventual love interest, Harrington having a thing about keeping romance within the family.

To Harrington’s credit, she does effectively capture the setting of River House and its nearby town, though her description of the unnamed town’s named neighborhood of Muley is cringeworthy: It wasn’t quite the town ghetto, but a few [B]lacks lived there. Oof! Too bad Harrington seemed more concerned with writing about Jenny’s hometown like a high school outcast with an axe to grind than crafting an entertaining gothic thriller. Had it been kept to 200 pages, Family Reunion could have been a tight tale of suspense. Instead, it’s a long-winded and tedious 304 pages, not really kicking into gear until its final 75. Like most family reunions, this one’s best avoided.

A Bizarre (and Kinda' Hot) Love Triangle

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

As Difficult to Put Down as it is to Stomach

 Trigger Warning: This is plantation porn, so there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to offend a lot of people, though I’d be more concerned if you’re not offended at all.

I thought I was done with plantation porn,
until I learned the identity of “Ashley Carter.”

In the opening chapters of the 1976 “Lance Horner novel by Ashley Carter,” MASTER OF BLACKOAKS, set in the antebellum South, we meet Baxter Simon, a Mississippi slave breeder traveling with Gree, a 14-year-old slave boy whose tongue has been cut out as punishment for lying. Simon, searching for one of his escaped slaves, stops at the Blackoaks plantation in Alabama, where he suspects she might be hiding. The plantation owner, Ferrell Baynard, takes an immediate dislike to Simon and insists the escaped slave is not at Blackoaks, yet permits the slave breeder to look around. During Simon’s tour of the plantation, he sees the Baynards’ “pureblood Fulani” slave Blade hard at work castrating hogs and immediately makes an offer to buy him. Ferrell Baynard refuses to sell Blade but allows Simon to thoroughly inspect Blade (Simon worked Blade’s foreskin back and forth several times. Blade’s…rod stiffened, blood pulsing into it so it stood thick and rigid in the breeder’s fist.), arousing—and outing—Ferrell Baynard’s arrogant son-in-law Styles Kenric while doing so. Simon’s visit to Blackoaks concludes with the slave breeder finding his escaped slave, Vinnie, who was indeed hiding on the plantation. When she attempts to flee, Simon kills her and, to the horror of the Baynards (and reader), throws her corpse into the hog pen, her value reduced to nothing more than food for swine.

And we’re not even 60 pages in yet.

So, yeah, Master of Blackoaks is not for the delicate, full of cruel acts and vile language, with characters using the N-word so frequently and so casually you’d think you were on Twitter. Yet, as difficult as Master of Blackoaks is to stomach, it’s just as difficult to put down, delivering everything a reader would want from plantation porn. If you’re not that reader, you probably backed out during the first paragraph of this post. For the rest of you, let’s continue.

After Baxter Simon departs, Blackoaks is visited by a slave trader who is just as despicable, Eakins Shivers. Shivers arrives with a coffle that “looked diseased, half-starved, exhausted. The ankles of every man, woman, and child bled from the unrelenting bite of their shackles with every step they took.” Though the Baynards find his treatment of his property distasteful, Ferrell Baynard invites Shivers into his home, where the two men talk within the confines of Ferrell’s office. Shivers is allowed to camp on Blackoaks property for the night. The next morning, Shivers is gone, and with him, two of the Baynards’ slaves.

Ferrell admits to his mistress, house slave Jeanne D’Arc (often addressed as Jahndark), that the missing men were sold, but tells his family that the slaves ran away, mostly to hide the truth about the plantation’s shaky finances. His oldest son Ferrell-Junior deduces what happened, however, and he does not approve. His father insists he had to. “That’s what Baxter Simon said, Papa,” Ferrell-Junior replies. “He cut out a slave child’s tongue because he had to.”

Even before the sale of the slaves, Ferrell’s son-in-law Styles intuits Blackoaks has a cash flow problem. Ferrell’s side hustle of distilling his own blend of corn liquor is what keeps the plantation afloat now that the over-farmed land only yields low-grade cotton. Styles, who heard the high offers Baxter Simon was making on Blade, thinks Blackoaks should turn its attention to slave breeding, becoming more resentful each time his father-in-law rejects the idea.

Meanwhile, his wife Kathy is driven to tears by Styles’ physical neglect. We know why he won’t touch her, and I might’ve spared a little bit of sympathy for him if he was merely a closet case, especially when coming out is not an option, but Styles is a sadistic, social-climbing asshole, who only married Kathy for her family’s position in Southern society. When he forces himself to have sex with his wife, he can only get aroused by causing Kathy pain. Kathy’s mother, Miz Claire, is concerned by her daughter’s unhappiness, though she totally misjudges the situation, worrying that Styles is too sexually demanding. “The ugly, depraved things men demand of women. I thanked God when I became ill—yes I did!—when your father moved out of my bedroom,” Miz Claire tells a disheartened Kathy.

The arrival of Hunter “Hunt” Campbell, a young, attractive Yankee hired to live at Blackoaks and tutor 15-year-old Morgan Baynard, provides a distraction, as well as an outsider’s point of view. Hunt has little interest in living in Alabama, but it’s crucial he put as many miles as possible between himself and Massachusetts since his cousin found out Hunter had been fucking his wife. To the Baynards’ credit, even though they don’t understand their new employee from the North, they are fairly accepting of him—provided he understands his place. Namely, that he keeps his abolitionist views to himself. Hunt rebels against this requirement in small ways, though not always successfully. His attempt at ingratiating himself with the kitchen slaves is merely awkward, with Jeanne d’Arc politely but strongly encouraging Hunt to take his white ass out to dining room with the other white folk and leave the kitchen slaves be.

Hunt makes greater inroads when teaching Morgan. Morgan is, in today’s parlance, intellectually disabled and struggles with his lessons, but Morgan’s “body slave” Soapy (a.k.a. Sophocles) is a quick study. Ferrell is none too pleased, telling Hunter that he’s wasting his time and Ferrell’s money. “I won’t tolerate it. There is a law against teaching Negro slaves to read. The state legislature passed that law upon deliberation. In many ways it’s a good law,” Ferrell says.

Not wanting to be sent back to Boston, the Yankee tutor acquiesces. Soapy is distraught, as there was one book (never named) that he wanted to continue reading. Hunter tells him not to worry. “Maybe I could lose it, Soapy. Somewhere you can find it. Only, you’ve got to be careful. If anybody finds you got it, they might fire me—but it’ll be much worse for you.”

But Hunter Campbell isn’t exactly a hero. When his employer extends the offer of a bed wench (“I’ve never believed it was healthy for a man—young or old—to be too long denied a sexual outlet”), Hunt balks, knowing the woman offered him would be forced to do so. But when he retires to his room and finds a nervous 15-year-old(!) slave girl, Sefina, waiting for him, Hunt takes full advantage, his principles no match against his blue balls.

‘I Must Test You…for Viscosity’

The text on the back of the book teases an affair between Hunt and Kathy (“He found solace and torment with Kenric’s wife”), but beyond a make-out session in the final chapters of the book in which Kathy seriously considers an affair with the hunky Yankee, the pair never hook up. The teaser text on the back also suggests Styles Kenric’s homosexuality would be featured more prominently, but it’s not addressed again until the last few chapters, though it does so in a most spectacular fashion, when Kathy spies her husband through her dressing room door “inspecting” Blade’s teen-aged brother, Moab.

“Lawdy, Masta Styles, you keep whipping my snake like that, it gonna be mighty easy to get that juice you wants.”

Styles nodded. His fingers tightened and he slowly stroked the boy’s penis until Moab’s hips tightened and writhed in helpless reflex. “Do you like that, Moab?”

“Lawdy, masta…lawdy…”

The stroking motions increased in intensity and Styles gripped the pulsing penis tighter.

Trembling with horror and outrage at war inside her, Kathy saw that Styles was shaking visibly, like a young boy with his first lover.

She heard Styles mumble something unintelligible about “fluid.” His breathing quickened and he sank to his knees before Moab. Moab’s eyes widened in disbelief at the white man on his knees before him. Moab was almost deranged with overwhelming passion. He could only stand, legs apart, as Styles caught him about the hips and pressed his face against his thighs. Styles gasped, “Viscosity.”

“What masta?”

“Viscosity, Moab.” Styles mumbled fanatically, his face pressed into the boy’s crisp black pubic hairs. “I must test you…for viscosity…. Do you see, Moab? Oh my, God, Moab, do you see?”

“I see, masta,” Moab whispered helplessly as the white man crammed the dark and distended penis between his lips, nursing it furiously.”

So, yeah, that happens. When Kathy confronts him, Styles alternately tries to blame her for spying then gaslight her, apologizing that she’s so upset about what she thinks she saw. But Kathy isn’t having it: “Think I saw! I saw you on your knees, Styles—sucking—that Black boy’s—cock!”

Kathy lobs the expected epithets at her husband (“Homo! Homo! Homo!”) before adding: “Being a homosexual is not nearly as rotten as your lying—your pretense.”

But Styles is unmoved. Since divorce isn’t an option, the pair split in the only acceptable way: Styles moves into a separate bedroom, just like his father-in-law had so many years ago.

Road to Tragedy Paved with Boners, Bored Rednecks

Kathy’s oldest brother Ferrell-Junior has his own issues. FJ knows Lorna June Garrity is not of his class, hers being in the lower-middle, but her social standing has no bearing on her beauty. Lorna’s mother, Lucinda, bitter ever since her husband was cheated out his inheritance by his conniving cousin Leander (all these L names!), is determined to claim her place in Southern society and is not above whoring her daughter out to get what she wants. (Mr. Garrity just drinks.) Lucinda gives her daughter advice that should be familiar to fans of Bobbie Gentry (or Reba McEntire or Orville Peck): “You be nice to Mr. Baynard now, Lorna June. You want him to come back again, so you be nice to him.” 

British publisher Pan Books’ cover
for Master of Blackoaks emphasizes
the book’s cruelty over the sex.

Lorna June is indeed real nice to the Baynards’ hot oldest son, making sure FJ is good and hard when she starts negotiating a more prominent place in his life, and by extension high society. Ferrell-Junor ultimately reasons that “the exchange was totally fair—her beauty was worth far more than all the dull parties his mother and her friends would ever throw.” Also: the power of boners.

His post-nut bliss later turns to regret when he sees his odious “friend” Gil Talmadge at the local watering hole. The book makes clear that FJ doesn’t really like Gil but goes along with his antics—like having a mentally disabled slave girl masturbate for the guys’ amusement—just so he’s not shunned by the group. Gil tells FJ that Lorna June is the town lay. “Hell, if you didn’t screw her the first time out, you’re in a new minority, old pal,” Gil says. “Every white guy in Calvert County has had ole Lorna June Garrity—at least once.”

FJ later confronts Lorna June about the rumors. She confesses he’s not the first man she’s been with (“I might have made a couple mistakes, but that’s all they were—mistakes”), but she quickly silences Ferrell-Junior’s concerns, as well as get him to again promise to invite her to an upcoming party at Blackoaks, with a blowjob. Girl knows how to negotiate!

The day of the party arrives, but the Garritys don’t. FJ had pleaded with Kathy to invite her but learns later that Kathy “accidentally” lost the invitation, conveniently finding it the morning after the party. A guilty FJ rides to town to apologize to the Garritys. Though her mother is royally pissed about the snub, Lorna June is forgiving and suggests she and Ferrell-Junior go for a ride out into the country. FJ doesn’t understand why she still wants anything to do with him, but it seems Lorna June finds him as hot as he finds her. Like they have on all their previous buggy rides, the couple pulls off the road to bang. But, as we’ve seen time and time again, the road to tragedy is paved with boners and bored rednecks:

They were so engrossed in each other they did not hear the rustling in the underbrush. It was not until they reached a driving climax, almost struggling off the blanket in their frenzy, and Ferrell fell away from her exhausted, that he saw Gil Talmadge and the others standing just inside the small clearing.

“Get out of here,” Ferrell said to her. “Get in that buggy and get the hell out of here. Dress on the road. Anything. Get the hell out of here.”

Lorna June isn’t quick enough. FJ is beaten and tied to a wheel of his buggy, powerless as Lorna June is gang raped. In the aftermath, Lorna June marries homely bank clerk Luke Scroggins and FJ, who heretofore has shown zero interest in his mother’s Catholic faith, becomes a motherfuckin’ priest.

A Steady Stream of Depravity, Debauchery and Dicking

I thought my days of reading plantation porn were behind me. I had waded into the slaveploitation cesspool in the latter half of the aughts, first with Kyle Onstott’s Mandingo, then its early sequels, Drum and Master of Falconhurst. I was drawn to their lurid content, the books being in questionable taste only increasing my fascination. I was offended by the subject matter, sure, but then I should be. Slavery is offensive. I take greater issue Gone with the Wind, which is, to quote director and What Went Wrong co-host Chris Winterbauer, “Civil War fan fiction.” At least plantation porn doesn’t try to romanticize the antebellum South.

It was when I sampled some slaveploitation lit outside of the Falconhurst series that I began reconsidering my interest in the genre. Richard Tresillian’s The Bondmaster (“Harder than Mandingo! Louder than Drum!”) was OK, even if it’s basically a retelling of Mandingo, re-locating the story from the American South to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, but novel’s implication that slavery wasn’t that bad so long as the slaves knew their place (a.k.a. the DeSantis narrative) did not sit well with me. Worse was Dragonard, a book I learned about through The Colbert Report, of all places. By virtue of focusing his novel on its repugnant main character, who aspires to be a slave master, author Rupert Gilchrist downplays the plight of the slaves. I also got the distinct impression while reading it that Gilchrist relished every N-word he typed. When I came to the end of Dragonard, I came to the end of my exploration of planation porn.

But then I learned “Ashley Carter” was yet another one of Harry Whittington’s pseudonyms. Whittington had been signed to continue writing the Falconhurst series in the early 1970s after the death of Lance Horner, who’d been writing the series after originator Onstott’s 1966 death. This accounts why some “Ashley Carter” books from this period include the credit “A Lance Horner Novel,” though Master of Blackoaks has nothing to do with the Falconhurst series.

Anyway, I sought out Master of Blackoaks because of its author, not because of its genre, and I was not disappointed. Whittington again proves he was good at his job, giving readers what they wanted, no matter the genre. Still, this book’s not for everybody. If you do pick it up, maybe don’t break it out while waiting in line to see a performance at the Apollo (or anywhere in public, really).

Master of Blackoaks is still trash, and Whittington cranks it up to 11, making it the best kind of trash, the book delivering a steady stream of depravity, debauchery and dicking. Whittington adds some redeemable touches, however. He makes sure that the plight of the slaves is known, and that while some, such as Jeanne d’Arc, are able to achieve some modest privileges (one of the perks of banging her master), they will always be denied the ultimate privilege of freedom, as Jeanne d’Arc discovers near the end of the novel. The Baynards may be “good” slave owners (i.e., they prefer their field boss Bos not whip their property, thank you), but Whittington doesn’t let readers forget they’re still slave owners all the same. The Baynards’ slaves are thought of as part of the family—until money’s tight, and then they’re chattel that Ferrell Baynard has no compunction about selling to a heartless slave trader like Eakins Shivers.  

As the book goes along, Whittington focuses more on sex than servitude. In addition to detailing Hunt Campbell’s night with a teen slave girl (yeah, that’s all kinds of wrong), FJ’s romps with Lorna June and Styles blowing Moab, he devotes several chapters to the field boss’s sexually frustrated wife Florine finding satisfaction with a very eager Moab (he’s a slave, but he’s also a horny teenager). While these chapters increase the novel’s prurient content, they add little to the narrative and reduce Moab to little more than a walking hard-on long before Styles tests the viscosity of his load.

The novel’s story is told in an episodic fashion, making for a fractured narrative. It’s about Ferrell Baynard—no, wait, it’s about Hunt, the Yankee tutor. Nope, now it's about FJ and Lorna June. Hey, why don't we check back with Ferrell Baynard.... It’s not hard to follow, though, just a bitch to synopsize. More frustrating, Master of Blackoaks doesn’t have a fully satisfying ending, leaving several storylines up in the air, with an implied “to be continued,” likely because Whittington knew they would be. There are three additional books in the Blackoaks series. I own two of them, meaning my plantation porn reviews are…

To be continued…

The fourth book in the Blackoaks series, A Farewell to Blackoaks,
was published in 1984 and is difficult to find today. The few
I found online had price tags of $70+, so, no, I won’t be reading it.