tials of both his son Paul Bismarck and of his own
father. It reflected the influence of Bontemps’s
southern heritage and Louisiana home. Bontemps
was inspired to write God Sends Sundayin part by
Joe Ward, his maternal granduncle. After seeking
out the man known for his dapper style, Bontemps
found himself thoroughly intrigued by Ward’s sto-
ries of black life and culture.
The novel chronicles the adventures of the
jockey Little Augie as he moves across the country
through New Orleans, St. Louis, and Mudtown,
California. Born on the Red River plantation
where he lives with his older sister Leah, the or-
phan Augie, a “thin, undersized boy, smaller for
his years than any other child on the place, [who]
had round pop-eyes,” has suffered somewhat be-
cause of his perceived physical frailty. Despite his
inability to toil alongside his peers or elders in the
cotton and rice fields, however, he “enjoyed a cer-
tain prestige” because he was born with a caul, or
“mysterious veil,” over his face. Augie also be-
lieves firmly in his own destiny and in the super-
natural signs that he interprets as signs of his
innate luckiness. He eventually stows away on a
steamboat that takes him to New Orleans. There,
he discovers the world of horse racing and with
Bad-foot Dixon, a stable man with a clubfoot, he
comes of age in the masculine world of horse
training and racing.
Augie’s knack for horses provides him great
opportunities for financial and romantic successes.
His first employer, Horace Church-Woodbine, who
greets Augie with the rousing shout “Where’s ma
black boy?” whenever he is looking for him, gives
the young boy his break as a jockey. Augie’s success
as a jockey is directly related to his relationship
with the horses. As the narrator notes, “[w]ith
horses he gained a power and authority, which, due
to his inferior size and strength, he had never ex-
perienced with people... after he became a full
fledged jockey he became a new person.” He starts
to walk with a swagger, delights in his newfound fi-
nancial successes, and begins to contemplate
spending his money on the ladies.
Over the course of the novel, Augie proves
himself to be an energetic, if not sometimes
overly aggressive, ladies’ man. In one of his first
encounters, with a San Antonio woman named
Parthenia, he gets drunk and then punches her
twice in the face, leaving her with two black eyes.
Unfortunately, Augie’s victim affirms his violence
and “pretended to admire him for his brutality.”
In St. Louis, where he reunites with his sister
Leah and her several children, he meets Della
Green, a “fancy woman” who caters to patrons of
a local establishment for “sweet men of the pe-
riod.” Della becomes his new love interest, Augie
defends her from the violence of Biglow Brown,
another man who fancies Della, and the two
eventually go on to win a cakewalk contest with
much flair and style.
Despite his apparent freedoms and lavish
spending, however, Augie cannot deny his feelings
for Florence, a light-skinned dressmaker whom he
meets and falls in love with in New Orleans. Augie
attempts to provide Della with the same material se-
curity and indulgences that his white former em-
ployer has bestowed upon his mistress Florence, but
it is clear that he continues to be obsessed with the
woman he has left behind. The love triangle that
emerges here, though, illuminates Augie’s political
powerlessness. Despite Augie’s initial belief that Flo-
rence is “a church gal” and “ain’t no chippie,” he
cannot deny that she is the kept mistress of his
wealthy white employer. Eventually, in the wake of
her abandonment by Mr. Woody, she finally accepts
Augie’s advances. Their efforts to set up house are
thwarted by the white neighbors who tolerated her
presence there as a white man’s mistress but not as
an independent woman of color with an African-
American lover. It is not long before Church-Wood-
bine, known as “Mr. Woody,” begins to wreak havoc
on Augie and on the couple. Florence’s jealous ex-
lover, who was forced to give up his relationship with
her because of his family’s objections, now engineers
Augie’s failures at the track by rigging the races and
horses assigned to the energetic jockey. The story
ends tragically. The erstwhile Florence deserts Augie
once his losing streak begins, and he becomes an al-
coholic. The novel closes as he boards a train that
he hopes will take him to Mexico and away from his
deteriorating life in the South.
THENEWYORKTIMESpublished a lengthy re-
view of the novel and praised Bontemps as a writer
who “plows deeply into a rich soil of Negro person-
ality” (NYT,15 March 1931, 60) and “[catches] the
light-heartedness and the soft melancholy of the
Negro race with such a perfect natural grace that itGod Sends Sunday 185