James Swearingen

Black Sheep James Swearingen

Black Sheep tells the story of the mythical American family named Dysen. Tom Dysen and John Williston, former college roommates, take a canoe trip down the Suwannee River from the Okefenokee Swamp. John, the approximate protagonist, is a young black intellectual from the north, who is escaping personal troubles by coming south and plunging into the wilderness. Days later he emerges awakened by developments in which more than his identity and vocation have been shattered and reconstructed. One catalyst is family stories told by Tom's father, Garret Dysen, on the banks of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville. The stories recount episodes of family history, from the seventeenth-century Dutch ancestor, Gerrit van Duyssen, through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and beyond. A second catalyst is a young female violinist playing Bach in the wilderness in the middle of the night. Among the themes are a congenital estrangement between Dysen fathers and sons, and, for John, who is writing a doctoral thesis in political theory, an unexpected confrontation of ideals descending from southern agrarianism and northern industrialism. Black Sheep is a political and philosophical novel for people with the leisure for thoughtful reading.