A Different Drummer

May 1, 1990
First published some 30 years ago, this is the story of Tucker Caliban, a black Southerner who one day salts his fields, burns down his house, kills his livestock and, with his wife and child, sets off a mass exodus of his mythical state's entire black population.

A fascinating premise is not fully worked out in this audiobook. What happens when the entire African-American population of a Southern state decides to move away? This story focuses more on the moment of departure than on the long-term consequences or the reason for the abrupt, unanimous decision to leave. The story is not helped much by narrator Jay Smooth. His voice is, appropriately, smooth, but he makes most of the characters sound the same, which is a problem in an audiobook with so many different viewpoints. Southern voices and accents are diverse, and Smooth could have increased the clarity of the text by making use of that variety. D.M.H. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine