The moaner's bench

by Mars Hill

The Moaner's Bench is a novel that distills a lifetime of experience into the story of an African-American boy coming of age in the Depression-era South. Sun Hughes is the youngest child in a middle-class Baptist family. Protected by his parents' affluence, his life is sheltered and full of wonder - but when the Depression hits, the family's fortunes wane, and Sun's innocence is lost as well. Sent to live with his Uncle Pet, a proud and zealous Baptist who decides to make sure his nephew "gets religion," Sun grows up - and grows wise - as the world his Mama and Papa kept at a distance slowly comes into focus, in stark black and white. A moaner's bench, literally, is a bench on which sinners must kneel in the Baptist church while waiting for the Spirit to strike them into repentance. To repent - and to understand what one is repenting for - one must first acknowledge that a sin had been committed at a given place and time, and then wrestle with the truth of the evidence. This experience