Strange Fruit

This novel, published in 1944, is set in a small town in Georgia in the 1920s and portrays the interaction between the two communities, black and white. The central character, Tracy Deen, has been leading a wayward life, including a relationship with a young black woman called Nonnie Anderson. Towards the end of the novel, he seeks to become a reformed character by attending church, getting engaged to respectable Dorothy and distancing himself from Nonnie. His decisive actions, however, have violent consequences.

The author, Lillian Smith (born 12 December 1897), grew up in northern Florida. After her studies, she spent several years teaching in eastern China before returning home in 1925. In 1936 she launched a quarterly literary magazine that encouraged liberal expression by authors from both communities of the South. She closed the magazine in 1945 to concentrate on her own writing. This was the first of several novels. She was renowned as one of the first prominent Southern white authors to write about and speak out openly against racism and segregation. She was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.

In the early chapters of this novel, we learn about the army service of the central character, Tracy Deen, and what the soldiers thought about when far from home:
“Months in the Ruhr Valley left you time to think. Cut off from everything that makes it hard to think at home, it was easier... Most of the men didn't talk much about ideas. It was women... When they talked about women Tracy would find something else to do. There was no woman he wanted to talk about or think about.”
When he is sent with his unit to Marseille, however, the change of atmosphere starts him thinking:
“He liked the place and used to walk for hours at night on the streets, feeling something about it...
One night — it's hard to know how a thing gets in your mind — he began to remember Nonnie. He was walking along a street whose name he never knew. There was music somewhere and voices somewhere, and in the shadows a girl softly accosted him. He did not answer her but a tone in her voice sounded in his mind after he passed her. There was a feeling in his mind too that he had been here before... the music, the easy soft laughter... He thought: I'd like to dance with Nonnie... She had never been something to think about until then... Now she was here.”
Such was the power of nostalgia in the soldier serving overseas.