Sensuality rating: lightly steamy

The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel. Published by Bell Bridge Books, 2012.

World War II is over, and lives will never be the same. For Isaiah High, the end of the war means knowing he’ll never be able to belong in Gideon, Texas again.

He’d understood that his service had changed him. Until he’d been forced to board the colored car at the Mason Dixon line, he had not realized that it might be impossible to return to the Jim Crow South, to fit himself back into rigors of a system that now seemed antiquated and peculiar.

However much he and his fellow soldiers had changed, it was clear the South had not. Companions warned him with stories of the beatings that soldiers received when, after long years away, they forgot themselves and tipped counter girls or filled paper cups with water from white water fountains.

As he passed though Gideon proper, he kept his gaze fixed firmly on his path so that he wouldn’t be required to speak to anyone, wouldn’t accidentally meet the eyes of anyone who’d take offense. It shamed him to do it, after so long walking like a man in the world. (more…)